Bearer
by The Unmarked Trail
Summary: Waiting patiently for years for his beloved mother's return, Jason is alone and losing hope until he realizes that some torches are meant to be passed.  Taking up the blade, he continues his mother's work, hoping blood will be enough. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

The woods came alive at night. As the sun slipped below the horizon, the very air seemed to hum and pulse as nocturnal creatures scurried from their dens and burrows and began their nightly sojourns. A crisp breeze carried the scent of the lake over the land, the smell damp, murky, almost alive.

The sound of heavy footsteps brought the night music to a temporary halt. The woods grew quiet as he approached. He slowed his pace, as always, taking a moment to drink in the surroundings. Fall would be here soon, he could see the leaves beginning to rust on the trees. Soon they would fall and crunch beneath his feet. As he stood motionless, the sounds of the night began to gradually return, having adjusted to his presence.

The moon was waning, its dim, almost lazy beams playing against the sheet metal of his shack. He cast an appraising look at his haphazardly constructed domicile. The roof was beginning to leak again. He would have to fix it soon, especially now that the nights were turning cooler. There was an old grey tarp he vaguely remembered seeing on one of his scavenging trips that might do the job.

That could wait, however. Jason had more important things to think about right now.

He paused before entering the shack. Perhaps it would be tonight. He held his breath as he pulled the old door open, the hinges immediately squealing their protest. Shutting the door behind him he fumbled for the box of matches he kept near the entrance. It was quiet within, too quiet. His heart sank. Tonight would not be special. But he wouldn't give up just yet, he would just have to be patient. Patience was perhaps Jason's greatest virtue, although the thought of yet another night passing without success was beginning to wear on him.

He clutched the matches tighter as he approached the too quiet, too still altar. With a shaking hand he struck a match against the box, the light sputtering at first then flaring true. He had to be sure, although the hopeful feeling that had been welling inside was already quickly fading. He held the match to one of the many candles he'd scavenged and stolen for this very purpose. The wick caught quickly, and he used this one to light the others. The smell of melting wax and acrid sulfur burnt his nose, mingling with the sickly sweet smell of decay.

He took a step back to survey his tribute to Mother. She was still as silent as she had been since that night so long ago. He'd carefully laid out her sweater and positioned her so that her blank eyes could take in the offerings he brought in hope that somehow things would go back to the way they had been so long ago.

His stomach twisted as he remembered that horrible night, that horrible girl, and Mommy's poor head… Oh god… He'd brought her back that night cursing himself for not intervening somehow, cursing himself even more for letting that wicked girl leave unscathed.

After bringing Mommy home, he'd sat with her for days, weeks perhaps. The time crept by so slowly that he felt as if he were slowly suffocating. It was like the lake all over again, only this time he was drowning in his own sorrow. As time passed the sorrow and fury festered inside him until he felt he could bear no more.

Then she had spoken.

"Jason, it's all right. You can make it better. Mommy can help you make it better. You can make her pay, you can make them all pay."

At that moment, his heart leapt as he realized exactly what he had to do. He had to find that evil girl, find her and make her pay. Then it would all be better. Mommy had said so.

And he had. He disdainfully looked down at the putrefying remains of that girl, Alice, the ice pick still protruding from her leathery head. As she had stood in the kitchen screaming at the sight of Mommy, he'd jammed the ice pick into her temple, then carried her back here to Mommy's temple where he laid her on the floor in an act of supplication. With reverence, he'd placed his mother's head back onto her altar where she could appreciate the fruits of his vengeance. After delivering his grisly offering, he'd waited expectantly, waiting for everything to get better as Mommy had said it would.

But she hadn't come back to make things better. He'd waited, and waited, and he continued to wait. For months he'd waited, and not a single word. The seasons had changed many times, and yet he was still here, waiting.

As patient as he was, he was beginning to feel as if things would never get better. Every night he'd waited for her and every night was the same. A thought came to him, something so obvious he felt foolish that he'd never considered it before.

Perhaps it didn't end with that girl. Mommy had told him that they all would pay…

That tiny flicker of hope raged high within him. Of course, Alice was only the beginning. There were more people that needed to pay, more bad people just like her, just like the ones that his mother had seen fit to punish. He would find them, and he would kill them as well. Maybe when they were all dead and lying at his mother's altar just like Alice she would return, and they could finally be together again. He couldn't help but smile underneath the cloth covering his face, already thinking of how proud Mommy would be of him for figuring this out on his own.

He wouldn't have to wait much longer. He could feel it in his bones.


	2. Chapter 2

Teresa sat fuming in the passenger seat of the battered old truck as Brad fiddled with things in the engine. They had been stalled out on the side of the road for almost an hour now, ever since the worthless hunk of metal with tires had given up on the way to the counselor training camp called Packanack. The two of them had been invited by Brad's old college friend Paul Holt, the man in charge of the facility. Paul was preparing the place to receive children in only a few short days, "to celebrate the glory of summertime in the woods," as the preppy idiot had said. She wondered how his perfectly pressed slacks would feel about summertime in the woods and all the joys it had to offer, such as dirt, mud, poison ivy, and moldy old cabins that probably didn't even have running water.

_God help you, Brad, if they don't have running water._

Brad had agreed, of course, because you always agreed to whatever your drinking buddy asked. It was some sort of unwritten male code, like leaving the toilet seat up. She had tried getting inside Brad's head in the year and a half they'd been dating, but always upon first entry she'd taken a good look through the haze of pot smoke and macho dreams of playing pro ball and seen nothing much but a man who wore his own pressed slacks during the nine to five working day and pressed jeans during those off hours when they were supposed to be looking for a better apartment. Instead this summer would be spent at...where the hell were they going? She pulled out the map and checked...Crystal Lake, they were spending the summer at Crystal Lake, at a lodge that sounded like the latest arcade game.

"How's it going out there?" she called to Brad through the open window.

No response. A few short feet away the deep, dark woods gave the only answer it could: a soft rustling of leaves that was like several, barely audible voices whispering about the city visitors.

"Brad?"

Nothing. She stuck her head a bit out of the window and saw that her boyfriend was not under the hood. In fact, he was nowhere to be seen. The whispering forest began to giggle. She had never experienced this before, but she heard a voice just then, disembodied, playful and mean.

_Maybe he's copping a squat somewhere, those perfectly pressed slacks hanging over a tree branch as he does it. Gotta protect the pants, after all. Do you know how much they cost?_

"_Brad,_ where the hell are you?"

She got out of the truck slowly, her door creaking like the floorboards of a haunted house. A gust of wind tried to push the door shut, almost a warning from nature not to leave the safety of the Bronco. She had to use her shoulder and every ounce of strength to triumph. After she slammed it behind her, she looked around. The narrow dirt road on which they were parked was bordered on all sides by tangled thickets, femur bone branches that jutted out every which way from massive trees and those conspiring leaves with their silken whispers. Taking it all in, Teresa was glad to be a girl from a well lit town where the only greenery was the meticulously manicured shrubs in front of the police station.

She went around to the front of the truck, where Brad's flashlight was still resting on the engine block, along with the package of pumpkin seeds he had been snacking on earlier. A bit of dark fluid had pooled on the ground below the bumper. Suddenly she remembered those urban legends about mad killers in the woods and hoped it was just oil from the aging Bronco. But if it was oil, that meant she would have to walk the rest of the way to Packanack all by herself. How far were they from it? A mile? Ten?

Suddenly a large, strong hand fell on her shoulder and she howled like a wolf at the moon. She spun around and came face to face with Brad's laughing face.

"Nice lungs, baby," he said, pulling her close. "I'm sure they heard you back home."

She smacked his chest and pushed him back. "Goddamn it, Brad! You know I hate that!"

"Calm down, I was just teasing," he said. "You'd think I just told you about my son who drowned."

"What are you talking about?"

"Jason Voorhees," Brad replied. "He drowned at Crystal Lake back in the '50s. His mother was the camp cook, and later she killed all the counselors for not watching him. Killed them with lots of sharp implements."

Teresa's eyes widened. "_That's_ where you're taking me?"

"Of course not. Packanack is on the other side of the lake."

"The same lake where he drowned."

"Technically..."

She sighed, pushing her grease stained boyfriend out of the way and climbing back into the truck. "Let me know when the beast is fixed. I just want to get there and into my pajamas."

Brad took his flashlight and slammed the hood down. "She's ready to go. We'll be there in another half hour."

He climbed in behind the wheel and cranked the starter. Dead silence from the beast. Teresa looked at him slowly, mouth puckered into a sour expression. Brad gulped and tried again. Again there was silence.

"I don't believe it," she hissed.

Brad kept turning the key, pushing the gas pedal to the floor. "You've just got to keep at it awhile. The beast makes you work for it someti-"

Teresa saw another kind of beast appear at Brad's window, a tall figure in a flannel shirt and with a hood over his head. There was only one eyehole. Brad's head whipped around just as the man jabbed something sharp and silver into his throat. Teresa screamed and Brad gurgled. Blood poured from his mouth like thick cough syrup as he clutched his gored neck. He looked at her with dinner plate eyes, and she saw that there was still a bit of grease on the tip of his nose. Incredibly, she had the urge to dab it with a handkerchief.


	3. Chapter 3

The hooded man jerked his wickedly sharp weapon from Brad's throat and paused, that single eye boring into her for a long moment. An icy shiver shot up her spine as their eyes met, too panicked to do anything other than listen to Brad burbling the last of his life out as he slumped over the steering wheel.

Fear kept her rooted to her seat until he began to make his way around to the front of the Bronco with the bloody weapon clutched in his hand, no doubt preparing to finish the job. She shrieked, adrenaline racing through her veins as she flung the door open and darted towards the thicket. Tearing through the brush she ran like a woman possessed.

Jason stood at front of the disabled vehicle, watching the girl run screaming of into the woods. He should have moved a bit faster, and saved himself the trouble of chasing her down. It didn't really matter though. He'd catch her. She might run from him, but he had the advantage of knowing the terrain better. Gripping the small scythe in his hand reflexively, he pursued her through the tangle of brush and limbs, intent on ending her life as soon as he caught her.

Teresa's lungs burned as she plunged through the woods. She ran without even knowing where she was heading, only that every step put more distance between her and what happened back there, and hopefully took her further away from the killer. A hysterical giggle escaped her lips; the urban legends were not so far off after all.

She knew he couldn't be too far behind, she could make out his quick, heavy footsteps over the pounding of her own heart, and they were only growing closer. She wasn't about to turn around and look however, she'd seen enough movies to know that was a bad idea. Pushing herself harder, she sprinted with all of her might.

How much further did these woods go on? She felt as if she'd been running for miles, and yet there was nothing but brush and trees ahead as far as the eye could see. Impulsively she turned to the left, still running as fast as her legs could carry her. It was probably too much to hope for that she could somehow lose him out here, but she could at least give it a shot. After all, what was there to lose, except her life?

Hopefully she would come upon civilization soon, she didn't know how much longer she could continue to keep up this pace. She veered off again, praying that the sack obscured his vision enough that maybe she would succeed in giving him the slip. Her legs protested violently, pain knifing through her as she forced herself on.

How she rued the day not so long ago that she had proclaimed track for losers. Had she known that she would one day be tearing through the woods running from a very large scary man with bag over his head wielding a crude sickle that he had just killed her boyfriend with she might have not written track off so quickly. But hey, hindsight was twenty-twenty.

Pressing on, she made one last turn and found herself staring at a house off in the distance. The thought of rescue gave her a second wind as she rushed for the house, and began screaming at the top of her lungs for help.

As she drew closer she realized that she might have been wrong about help being near by. Upon closer inspection she could now see that the house looked vacant, boards nailed over the door and the windows. The house was definitely unoccupied and in disrepair, and for quite some time at that.

Hopelessness flooded her, and at that moment a searing cramp shot through her hamstring bringing her to her knees.

Whimpering, she realized she had no other choice now, there was no way she could continue to run. She had to try to get inside of that house, even if there was no savior on the other side of the door with a phone for the cops and a loaded gun for Brad's killer.

The woods were quiet, and she couldn't hear those heavy boots pounding the ground anymore, maybe she really had lost him out there. She limped up to the house and began pulling at one of the boards nailed over the door. As tenaciously as she tried to work it free, it held firm.

Splinters pierced her soft hands, adding just another level to the pain coursing through her entire body.

Tears ran down her cheeks as she frantically tried to work it free, mentally cursing Paul, Packanack, and even poor, dead Brad for ever bringing her here to Crystal Lake.

Finally it began to budge after much coaxing and she began on the next board, half expecting him to appear any minute, alerted to her location by her earlier frantic pleas for help. He was out there somewhere. She had to get inside.


	4. Chapter 4

Teresa tore her perfectly manicured nails to pieces prying off the boards covering the front door to the creepy old house in the woods. She was never going to get them all off, but if she could just make a cheerleader-sized opening...just big enough to squirm through...easy does it...

_Easy does it? Move, girl! A murderer's after you!_

Finally she managed an opening big enough to get through, and squealed as she forced herself into it. Jagged edges of wood scraped her face. The house was pitch black and filled with ancient dust and cobwebs. Several silken strands stroked her cheeks and caught in her hair. A spider ran across her head. Tearing them from her glossy locks, she stumbled her way into the darkness, hoping against hope that there wasn't a hole in the floor. Or worse, some hungry animal that had made this place its den. Christ, if only she had grabbed Brad's flashlight from the Bronco. If only she could _see_.

Taking gentle but quick baby steps, Teresa felt out in front of her with both hands, just as she did whenever Brad and his buddies took her to a haunted house, with those awful narrow passageways. Now she would give anything for those claustrophobic corridors, for this front room was wide open and all she felt was thin air. She kept expecting an unseen pair of hands to grab hers and jerk her forward. If that happened, she would just give up. She couldn't run anymore. Her body was covered in sweat and she could barely breathe. She had enough strength left to hope that this black house wouldn't become her tomb.

Jason Voorhees sprinted through the forest after his nubile pray, huffing under the hood. He would get her. There was no way she could escape. The stupid bitch would trip and land on her ass, or she would get so turned around that she would end up heading directly for him. It had taken even him a few years to really get a feel for the land, the tangles, the trees. Plus there were little creeks that became bogs and tiny swamp pockets just waiting to gobble sneakers and sink a person to their knees. This girl had no hope.

As he ran he gradually became aware of something. He was headed in a direction not just familiar, but dreaded. The house. Oh God, the cursed house. The place where he had spent just a handful of years before his drowning, but those years had scalded themselves upon his mind like brands of fire. His mother had lived there. Elias had lived there. His father had not remained with them long, but Jason's memory of him seemed as talented as a white tailed deer bent on escaping his spear. There was no earthly way he could remember him as a baby, but somehow he did. He remembered Elias looming over his crib and scowling, always scowling. He remembered the horrible things he used to scream at his mother-

_Did you fuck the devil?_

-during their awful fights. He remembered learning to walk, and Elias had barked between shots of Whiskey that once the creature learned how to do that, it was just a matter of time before they had to enroll him in school. "What the hell is he going to learn to be? A sideshow attraction, Pamela? I don't think you can get a degree in that."

He remembered the feel of his father's callused hands as he beat him like a chicken stealing fox finally caught in a trap. They were thick and rough, like sandpaper. They didn't feel human at all. Where Jason had great love and affection for his mother, he had terrible hatred and rage for his father. Some of that rage had torn open that bastard's throat back on the road, but there was still some left. The girl would soon taste that rage. He poured on the speed, already seeing the house up ahead. Voorhees Manor. His inner radar told him the girl had taken refuge inside.

Her mistake.

Teresa had somehow found the great staircase leading upstairs. She moved quickly, no longer caring if anyone was hiding up there in the bedrooms. The killer who had murdered her boyfriend had to have found the house himself by now. It was only a matter of time before she heard his powerful hands crashing into the boards, forcing his way inside.

Moving down the second floor hall, Teresa could at least feel the walls on either side now, and picture frames. Once she bumped into a little table and an old lamp quivered, threatening to fall. Her hands pawed it, trying to find the switch. Hopefully it was not one of those you had to light with a match. She could see moonlight shining through the planks covering the window at the far end of the hall, but she wanted to see her surroundings better. She wanted to take the lamp into one of the rooms and hopefully, hide under the bed. Let that monster try and find her with his one eyehole, the bastard.

_Do you really expect the bulb to still work? Do really expect it to still __**have**__ a bulb?_

She ignored the taunting voice of this horrible place and when her fingers found the shape of a light bulb under the shade, she yipped. Moving them down, she then found the switch. _Let there be light._ The bulb winked on and off for a few seconds before shining weakly. Immediately she saw the picture above the table against the wall, one of a young woman standing beside a lake. Crystal Lake.


	5. Chapter 5

Within a second of seeing that picture Theresa realized she was in the worst place of all possible places; she was in Jason's house! Her instincts and intuitions had always been sharp, almost psychic, when it came to things like this, and she _knew_she was looking at the psychotic mother from Brad's story. "Great." She muttered softly, "Running from one killer into another's house." The thought began to form in her mind, a whisper at first, then growing until it was a full scream; the person after her, it was Jason himself! She knew, or at least prayed, that it couldn't be, but the little voice in her head was shrieking louder than the crowd at a Cubs game that just that was the truth. There was nobody else it could be. Jason, dead, alive, or otherwise, was the one chasing her, and now she was in his house, her prior fears of this being the den of a vicious animal at once confirmed and superseded.

Jason could see the light from the lamp on mother's nightstand from outside, his one functional eye a damned good one, hawklike, in fact. He knew which entrance to use to get to the bitch now, he'd be on her in a matter of seconds. Stepping to a downstairs window and opening it slowly, so as not to alert her, Jason eased his massive body through and into the house. The place gave him the chills, that was why he made such efforts to avoid it. There was nothing but evil here, never was, and he would much rather return to the bottom of the lake than be here, but now this place had drawn him here. Maybe it was going to kill him finally. This house, this evil house, was going to kill him and the bitch upstairs was the bait.

He'd watched the house from a distance for years, keeping an eye out for Mother and also possibly for his father. Yes, whether the house killed him or not Jason had long ago resolved that if he ever found his father he would come here to finish some old business with one Elias Voorhees. He didn't know if he'd kill his father or not, he'd never been able to come to a decision on that, but he did know if he ever found him Elias would be the one receiving punching bag treatment. I'd pound his head until it looked like mine, He decided, though still unsure if father would die by his hands or not.

Theresa could feel someone in the house with her, and she knew Brad's killer, her future killer barring divine intervention, was there. Divine intervention, she silently laughed and cried at the same time, knowing her only chance for life was an act of the Almighty. She reflectively played with the Rosary around her neck, a gift she'd gotten from her late, beloved Grandfather for her confirmation, accepting her fate as she heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. Knowing there was no way for her to escape, the window was locked and nailed shut, and even if she could get out of it the fall would incapacitate her, she got on her knees with the Rosary between her hands, "Hail Mary, full of grace..."

Jason could hear the woman praying from Mother's old room, and knew that whatever his intentions he couldn't interrupt. Closing his eyes as he listened to her, he reflected back on hearing his mother say the same prayer so many years ago and teaching it to him, remembered her taking him to Our Lady of Peace to be baptized by Father Callahan against Elias' wishes. He could feel his temperature rising with his anger as he remembered the savage beating Mother had received just for trying to make sure her son, doomed to a life of Hell on Earth, would go to Heaven. Of course, Elias Voorhees had no belief in or use for God, in his mind he **was**God. Yes, he would kill his father if the chance ever presented itself, if only to show him that he wasn't even close to being God. He let the anger slip away as he heard her finish. He mulled over the idea of letting her go, but his mother's voice told him he couldn't, if he did she would come back with others and they would hunt him like an animal. She'd made her peace, Mother said, now he had to finish the job before she had a chance to destroy him or herself. Jason nodded to Mother's voice, he owed it to this woman now.

Theresa rose from her knees just as Jason entered the door, unarmed but his intentions obvious. She smiled sadly to him, "Hello, Jason."

She knew his name? How? The very act of her calling him by name brought a wave of fear crashing down upon him; maybe he was right, maybe the house was going to kill him at last and this woman was indeed bait.

Theresa saw the confusion in Jason's eye, and the moment of distraction and... could it actually be _fear_? She felt then her prayers had been answered, God had provided her with a chance to survive. While Jason stood there stunned, she took an opportunity to grab the lamp off of the nightstand and swing with all her might.

The next thing Jason felt after the fear was intense pain as the lamp shattered on him, embedding broken porcelain and glass into his skin. He howled in agony and began to swing wildly at her, trying to get his hands on her now.

Seeing she had hurt Jason Theresa felt more like she might survive, "That's for Brad, you bastard!" She screamed, letting him get close enough where she could jam the still sparking filament of the bulb into his chest. She knew where there were sparks, there was electricity, and it was one hell of a weapon.

Jason felt the voltage coursing through his chest, disrupting his heartbeat and making it hard for him to breathe. It hurt like Hell and sent him to the floor in a crumpled, smoking heap, but that wasn't what really surprised him. What really surprised him was the fact that the house still had electricity. Why would we still have electricity here? He wondered as he lay helplessly watching her dash away from him, his muscles not responding to his frantic demands for them to get up and rejoin the chase.

Theresa wasn't going to waste any of the precious time her miracle had given her, pushing her body harder than ever before now. She was sure she had killed him, but just in case she wasn't about to leave any distance between them on the table. RUN! It was her one and only command to her body, just fucking **RUN**!


	6. Chapter 6

Rage coursed through him as he desperately willed himself to rise to his feet and catch the awful girl that had caused him so much pain. So much pain… He felt foolish, wishing he had thought everything out more thoroughly, that he had developed some kind of strategy for this sort of thing. He'd never considered that she might fight back and escape.

Mistakes were made, mainly ever letting her run to begin with. If only he had ended her with one swift blow back at the road he would never be in this embarrassing and painful position. Unarmed, at that. He'd lost the small scythe in his pursuit. This was not proving to be an auspicious day for killing.

As much as his body did not want to cooperate, he must get up and catch her before she went too far. His mother was right, if she got away, she'd soon be back with others. Bad enough that he'd allowed her to hurt and outsmart him, she couldn't be allowed to bring strangers that would hunt him relentlessly.

This possibility both frightened and enraged him. Even if he could lay low long enough to evade a search party, they still would eventually find his shack. Although they might not immediately connect it with him they would probably tear it down as an eyesore, leaving him homeless. Leaky roof and squeaky hinges aside, it was still his shack and the only place he had to go.

As he slowly rose to his feet, hissing in pain and fury he could picture their looks of disgust as they sifted through his home, wrinkling their noses as they speculated on what kind of degenerate monster could ever live in such an ill-kept, smelly hovel. They'd laugh at his mostly pathetic attempts at home repair, dilapidated furnishings and his overall lack of housekeeping.

Just like they had laughed at Jason himself all of those years ago. His blood boiled, remembering this all too well. Then they would open the door to his back room and find Mommy…

Mommy!

Mommy was there in his shack, sitting defenselessly on her candle-covered shrine, all alone… if they came they would take her away, this time for good. This thought galvanized him into action, despite his body's protests. He raced down the hall and to the staircase furiously. When he caught her, he'd not only kill her, he'd tear her to pieces. No one would jeopardize his mother and his home, especially not this little bitch.

It wasn't too late, she was still inside the house. Jason could hear her voice downstairs cursing as she scrabbled at the tiny entrance she'd made to get into the house. Ha, she hadn't known to use the only window free of boards, the entrance he'd taken. To be fair, how could she possibly know? This still was, although regrettably, his home turf. Confidence surged through him, and the pain in his body receded. He wouldn't be the one to die here in this evil place tonight, she would.

Arriving in the entryway just in time to see two legs kicking as she madly attempted to wriggle through the jagged opening in the boards. Jason dashed to the door and grabbed one bloody leg and jerked her roughly back into the house.

Shrieking hysterically, Teresa emerged from the broken boards torn and bleeding as he flung her down onto the dusty floorboards much in the manner of a petulant child tossing a broken toy. As she stared up at him in horror, pleas for mercy spilled from her lips in a rapidly disjointed, incoherent fashion.

Sobs tore her throat as she looked up into that single, furious brown eye, and she knew her pleas were falling on deaf ears. What else was there to do now but close her own eyes and wait for the inevitable? There was no way to change the fact that he would be the last thing she ever set her eyes on, but at least she could slip from this life without the image of this monster's killing blow. That much she could control.


	7. Chapter 7

The father-rage had dissipated after he'd killed the boy and girl in the Bronco. The punk had been an easy kill, shucking and jiving about his piece of shit truck and generally looking like the cat that swallowed the canary due to his beautiful girlfriend beside him. After tearing open his throat, Jason had chased said girlfriend to his childhood home, where he'd taken care of her once and for all, wielding the poker once used to tend ash and cinder. He then placed her on the old couch in front of the fireplace. Now he was glad to be free of the rotten place. Let the girl remain there, entombed for all eternity within its moldy, spider filled walls. After hiking it back to the Bronco and dropping the gearshift down to D, Jason had eased the truck deep into the woods and left it. He then dragged Captain America back to the Voorhees house and put him right beside his lady. Repairing the boards over the door had been easy enough, and he had been able to use his father's own tools that were still in an upstairs bedroom.

Let them find the truck. They would never find the bodies. Their secret was still safe, his and his mother's.

He stalked silently back to his shack after that, ravenous and wanting to hunt but staying close enough to the dirt road to see if anyone else happened along. He had heard cars earlier, out by another secluded interstate, and his gut told him things were brewing. People might be opening Camp Crystal again, or some place nearby. If he found that to be the case, he would embark upon an orgy of destruction not known since the biblical stories of old, locked away in the attic of Voorhees Manor. After the killings he would set every structure aflame and let it spread to the trees so that the entire forest was blazing like the savage hellfire of the Devil's personal opera, complete with his own howling at the moon. His screams of triumph would scatter the paper-white ash and cast it up into the smokey night sky.

_Eat, Jason._ His mother now. _You've just had a great victory, but don't let yourself get weak. If you do you'll never have revenge._

Yes, his mother was right. He veered away from the dirt road and back into deep wilderness, where the thickets tore at his pants and left barbs on the front of his flannel shirt. He still had the fireplace poker from the Voorhees house, and now he needed to use that weapon to bring down some dinner.

Paul Holt's Counselor Training Center at Packanack lodge was just about ready for business. Holt himself had only recently arrived, but it was amazing how much he had accomplished in the past few hours. After a mostly sleepless night of checking the main buildings to make sure every bed had fresh linen, clear and not brown water flowing from the taps, and properly functioning light switches, he was positive his counselors would be in complete comfort as they learned how to properly mentor the young children arriving soon. If only his buddy Brad and girlfriend Teresa had bothered to show up as promised. So much for putting his faith in that pot head. Paul liked a little weed as much as the next guy, but Brad was beginning to dabble a bit too much. His football career was going to suffer, but you couldn't tell him anything.

Ah, at least there was Ginny, coming soon. Where Paul's faith in Brad had been about seventy-five to eighty percent, his faith in Ginny was one hundred and ten. She would make it up here if she had to pull her own sputtering little red convertible Volkswagen behind her. Thinking of her now, her creamy, clear complexion, sandy blonde hair always pulled back in a sassy ponytail, blue eyes more refreshing than fifty Crystal Lakes put together, Paul sighed. He was in love with her, something he had not intended to happen. He had just gotten out of a bad relationship several months ago, formerly shackled to a girl who was sweet, spunky Ginny's polar opposite. Deborah had been vain, self centered and completely incapable of understanding his passion for the outdoors. Add to that her hatred of children, and he had known there would be trouble on the horizon. She had only barely supported him in his other youth camp endeavors, and after the last experience he had not been surprised at all to find the Dear John letter on the nightstand.

Ginny, however, Ginny was born to hike, swim and fish. And somehow she looked fresh and beautiful during every single minute of it. The times when she sweat through her makeup? No reaction except to puff her cheeks out comically and say, "No beauty contest ribbon for me today." Though they had spent much time getting to know each other - and shared their first kiss - at the last youth camp in Michigan, this time was going to be different.

This time he was going to tell her he loved her, right here beside the gently rippling waters of Crystal Lake. It was about time this place had some happy memories attached to it. But that had been part of the attraction to Paul, the challenge of redeeming the area through his special brand of youth camp. Mrs. Voorhees and her massacre had left quite the bloodstain on the area. There were a few times when even he, big, strapping guy with more survival skills than most, than Brad even, found himself hearing a twig snap and turning quickly, expecting the worst.


	8. Chapter 8

Paul certainly had his work cut out for him. It wasn't just Pamela Voorhees's twisted act of revenge that Crystal Lake had to somehow rise above. There had been the series of mysterious fires set over a period of years that had consumed cabins and woods, and even the shining waters of the lake had suffered contamination, the bad water forcing the original camp to remain closed for yet another season.

There was also the persistent legend of Jason Voorhees, the only son of the camp cook turned murderess. Supposedly he'd drowned back in 1957 and his death had been the thing that sent Pamela over the edge. Curiously, despite attempts to recover his body from it's watery grave, the corpse had never turned up.

Some whispered that Jason had somehow survived his ill-fated plunge into the lake and even now prowled the woods around Crystal Lake. Paul found the notion rather ridiculous, personally. After all, if memory served wasn't he supposed to be deformed and mentally challenged? Even a perfectly normal child would quickly succumb to the elements or starvation, yet alone a child as disadvantaged as Jason was said to be.

As if the very idea of him somehow crawling out of the lake after drowning, and then surviving in the woods for any length of time wasn't ridiculous enough, the story went on to say that he had actually been at Camp Blood that Friday the thirteenth and had witnessed Pamela's decapitation at the hands of her intended last victim. While it was very odd that the sole survivor of the bloodbath at Camp Crystal Lake had been reported missing two months afterwards, the very implication that Jason Voorhees had anything at all to do with her disappearance was outright hogwash.

He rolled his eyes, unable to believe that some people could really take such an obvious fabrication so seriously. In a way it was sad. Crystal Lake certainly had more than it's share of true horror stories and tragedy, but people felt the need to embellish what was already terrible enough with tall tales of a deformed, retarded drowning victim lurking in the woods seeking vengeance for his murdered mother. Bullshit, all of it, but even Paul had to reluctantly admit that it made for a great campfire tale.

Paul found his mind drifting away from that long dead boy and back to Ginny, of that perfect moment he would share with her in the near future. He envisioned the sun setting over sparkling waters, a gentle breeze blowing over the water to softly tease her ponytail, and those beautiful blue eyes looking into his own as he uttered the words he'd been longing to say to her for quite some time now.

Not terribly far away from where Paul scoffed at the idea of his very existence, a very real and very hungry Jason trudged through the woods carrying what would be dinner back to his shack to cook up.

The fireplace poker was not what he normally would use on a hunting trip, convenience and hunger had dictated that. After living off the land for so many years it wasn't as if he'd never had to improvise before. Making do with what was available was one of his strengths, and coupled with the patience he had in no short supply he'd made it work for him. His reward was a large black-tailed jackrabbit that would fill his belly long enough to keep him going another day.

Jason found himself picking up his pace, anxious to get home and cook up the jackrabbit and eat already. Chasing the girl had taken it out of him, and dragging her dead asshole boyfriend from the truck back to the house had only made him that much hungrier.

His stomach growled in frustration, he still had to skin, gut, dismember and cook the rabbit. It would be at least an hour or two before he would finally be able to enjoy the spoils of his hunting trip. He resolved to take a night trip to town soon to steal some more canned food. After a day like this he really could appreciate the idea of food already hunted, killed, prepared and packaged.

Thinking about all of the things he could bring back from town helped him keep his mind off of his protesting stomach as he began to prepare his meal. In addition to a nice cache of stolen food that would make his life much easier, maybe he could scrounge up some new clothes as well.

There were always plenty of untended clotheslines around; over time he'd learned which houses had not only clothing that would fit him but also which ones were often neglected as the lady of the house caught up on her soap operas after doing the weekly wash. He had yet to be caught; with their eyes glued to the television screen inside, the housewives of Crystal Lake never once noticed him entering their yards to make off with a shirt here, a pair of socks there. One time he'd been stealing clothing from an unattended line when he'd lucky enough to notice a pair of boots sitting on a back stoop that had turned out to just fit him. That night had netted a good haul, but he avoided the house for some time afterward, worried he'd been a bit too bold and the occupants might start watching the clothesline more carefully.

Yes, a trip to town was in order. He'd rest after he ate, and then later tonight he would venture out to engage in his version of shopping.


	9. Chapter 9

Lt. Ed Tierney had just marked another day off of his calender, only four more months until he retired and moved to Boca Grande, Florida. Of course, he'd have moved to Lincoln, Nebraska to get the hell away from Crystal Lake after what he'd seen five years ago. He'd left the NYPD after just a year to get away from that sort of thing; small towns are safe and peaceful he had figured, nothing will ever happen there. Ed Tierney had packed his stuff in the night and moved away from New York City as fast as he could, far away from the mangled corpses of women in the subway to a peaceful place with a beautiful name: Crystal Lake. "Too bad it was just a name." He muttered to himself, remembering how quickly things had gone to Hell after his arrival. He had barely gotten here when that poor Voorhees boy drowned, then the fires, the murder of those two teenagers...

That part stuck in his craw worst of all. He'd wanted to charge them with negligent homicide in the drowning death of the Voorhees boy, the law was clear and they had admitted to having abandoned their posts and the children in their charge, but Chief Morganthau had said no. Then Tierney's report went missing, both the copy he sent to the Chief and the one he sent to the County Attorney in hopes of the prosecutor taking it upon himself to charge those teenagers, Barry and Claudette, with **something**, _anything_. Yeah, the report had gone missing, with the Chief and the County Attorney both claiming to have never seen it, but Morganthau had still dropped Tierney in property for fourteen years and forgotten about him.

Fourteen years of working amongst dusty boxes, moldy clothing, and spiderwebs. Fourteen years of putting in for transfers and promotions and always being denied. Fourteen years of volunteering for duty most officers would scoff at just to get out of that property room and being denied even that little respite. Fourteen years of issuing equipment to new officers, kids, who would go on to be his bosses. Fourteen years of spinning his wheels, only to be given relief when Chief Alan J. Morganthau died of a heart attack while sitting on the crapper in his office. For someone who had never seen the report, Morganthau had sure held a grudge.

Even then his relief had only been brief, lasting only the four month tenure of Interim Chief Carl Christy, Jack's brother. No sooner had Carl Christy became Chief then Ed Tierney had been reassigned from Property and promoted to Detective, and no sooner did Ed Tierney make Detective then he reopened the cases, all of them, stemming from the Voorhees boy's drowning in '57 until then. No sooner did he do that and start making progress then the Town Council appointed Richard Alan Morganthau to replace his father as the permanent Chief of Police. Oh, and in case it wasn't predictable, no sooner did Richard Morganthau take his daddy's old job then he decided to cut the Detective squad by _exactly_one spot. "Last promoted, first demoted." He'd told Tierney as he'd handed him the keys to a squad car and the case files disappeared again.

That nightmare would only last two years before Little Morganthau left the department ahead of an investigation into his expenditures from the Department's discretionary fund. Last Tierney had heard he was Principal of some Catholic school somewhere in Florida. Not that it mattered, he was out of Tierney's hair; such as it was.

Of course, it hadn't been all bad. He had spent those sixteen years stopping in on one Pamela Voorhees, the pretty young mother who had lost her boy that day in '57, continuing to update her on anything he found out. Sixteen years spent searching Crystal Lake for poor Jason's body in his old Boston Whaler, more often than not the only boat on the water, like everyone else was scared to be out there, though Ed Tierney never once felt threatened by anything at the lake. Sixteen years of trying to get justice for Jason.

Finally in 1973 Scott Fitzsimmons became Chief of Police, immediately promoting Tierney to Sergeant and giving him his choice of patrol routes; of course he chose the country roads at and around Camp Crystal Lake, and Ed Tierney instantly had a career again. Ed Tierney, the man labeled a coward for leaving NYPD because he couldn't handle the death and destruction of humanity brought on by the killer christened 'The Subway Stalker,' Ed Tierney, branded a troublemaker and exiled to a room full of dusty boxes for trying to help a poor, deformed little boy, that Ed Tierney was now a respected Sergeant on the Crystal Lake PD. His duties had become heavier once he put on those stripes, so his trips to the lake had become less and less frequent, his personal crusade for justice for poor little Jason slowing to a crawl before grinding to a halt as peace was restored in the area. Ed Tierney was finally getting to enjoy being a small town cop.

Then five years ago it all went to Hell again. Poor Pamela had finally flipped out and attacked the camp, killing everyone in sight until one of them finally managed to kill her. He remembered standing on the bank of the lake and seeing the survivor of that massacre, the girl who had killed Pamela Voorhees, fall out of that canoe into the water, screaming as she hit. He remembered swimming out to her and dragging her back to shore, determined not to let anyone else lose their child in that lake. It was that very action that led Fitzsimmons to give him his Lieutenant's bars there in Alice Hardy's hospital room, and it was that very action that had always caused him to feel a little bit of guilt, like it was all somehow his fault. If I had tried harder to get Claudette and Barry prosecuted, of if I had at least found Jason's body so poor Pamela could've given her boy a proper Christian burial, he thought, maybe none of this would've ever had to happen. He hated himself for it, but he had always felt a little disloyal to Pamela for saving Alice Hardy's life, as if by doing his duty he had betrayed a woman he had failed. Sixteen years without any hope of bettering himself, only to be promoted twice for giving up on the quest that had defined his life, the bitter irony was too much for him to take sometimes, so the Beefeater bottle was his best friend.

Now, now some idiot from out of state was reopening that camp again. "Some people never learn." He sighed, before adding an hourly patrol of the lake area to his shift postings, just in case. Only four more months, he reminded himself.


	10. Chapter 10

Ginny Field was happy behind the wheel of her car, especially at the height of summer. Then she could have the top down and let the wind tear through her hair. The little red June bug also liked warm weather with no trace of snow; most of the breakdowns occurred in December and January, smack dab in the middle of when she needed to allow extra time to get to a job, or college class. But somehow, no matter how many times the flaky bug flaked out on her, she never considered getting a new one. This car had more character than some of the people out there in the big, bad world.

Now she was speeding down a secluded highway on her way to a place called Crystal Lake. Paul Holt was waiting for her, along with a bunch of twenty-somethings intending to become camp counselors. She had only done it herself once before, at the camp in northern Michigan, but it had been so enjoyable that she vowed to continue. The children had been marvelous, and watching as the hyper sprites raced along the sun baked docks and tossed themselves into Cranberry Lake was something she'd never forget. Their shrieks of delight were better than anything done by the New York Symphony Orchestra. Paul was masterful with them, too, never once losing his temper or sense of command. _He _was in charge, and while that was the case, the childrens' safety and happiness were tops on the list of things to do. Why was she kidding herself, there wasn't even a list. Just lazy, lovely days wandering through the green kingdom of summer camp and toasting marshmallows and bare feet by the campfire.

At Camp Cranberry Lake the two of them had grown very close, and she blushed now as she thought of how they'd almost made love in her cabin. But they had not yet been ready for that Ultimate Leap, and so had backed off together at the same moment, parting with a passionate kiss. "I've got to face the children in the morning," they'd chimed together, laughing. If Crystal Lake was anything like Cranberry Lake, she was in for a treat. They would spend more precious weeks bonding over children and their own private walks, sitting by the lake as the light of a full moon played across the water top. And this time, this time she might let him go all the way.

The June bug sputtered a little as she took the exit leading to Crystal Lake, prompting her to say, "It's okay, baby. No more being stuck behind some big, fat truck. It's all open roads and fresh air from here on out."

The car, as if in complete harmony with its owner, stopped the coughing and cruised smoothly again. She switched gears and sped along, the radio off and the sounds of nature ruling the day. It was crickets and cows close to the highway, but the deeper in she got the rolling hills became tree covered and silent, save for the rustling of slender branches. Consulting her map, she made the appropriate turns and found herself after some time on a series of winding dirt roads that took her through a lush landscape barely touched by blue sky or sun. The canopy of leaves overhead allowed only several chosen rays to streak through, creating that dreamy golden-green color that was a staple of her childhood memories in Michigan. She grinned at the thought of New Jersey being close kin to the Mitten. It was going to be a good summer.

Jason saw the little red car zoom by on a dirt road near one of his tree perches, throwing up a billowing cloud of dust and dirt that disturbed the peace of his forest. A few backfires got his hopes up for an eventual breakdown, but soon the vehicle - and its pony-tailed female driver, was out of sight. It was just as well. He was on a high branch waiting for an animal to wander by and frankly didn't have the strength right now to leap down for a fresh human kill. But soon, soon his belly would be full and his muscles would be working at top performance. And when that happened, that girl, and whomever she was speeding to meet, would be dead meat. He would bring them all back to his shack to show mother, and mother would be more pleased than at any time since her unjust murder at the hands of The One Who Was Already There.

He smiled at the thought of Alice Hardy resting her old bones back at the shack. He had propped her up against his mother's shrine in the ultimate tribute, and that was where she had been for the past five years. He was curious about the one in the red car and how she might look back at his woodland shack. Would she go with the decor? His smile broadened, and inside his skull his mother had a laugh along with him.

_Soon we'll see just how good she looks in here, with Miss Icepick._

He was glad his mother had approved of his weapon choice. He had to make the kill right now to sustain himself, then prepare his other weapons for when he finally came face to face with the girl in the little red car.


	11. Chapter 11

With difficulty Jason tore his attention from the girl in the car and back to the task at hand. She would die, as would anyone else that entered his land from this point on. It was a rarity to come across this much outside interference in the span of a few days, and it did not bode well. She was definitely on her way to meet someone, no other reason to be coming down this way. Well, he groused, she'd be sorely disappointed if she were expecting to meet up with the couple from the truck earlier.

Although, there might be more coming here to tramp through the woods, swim in the lake and generally wander around poking their noses into anything and everything they could. He stiffened, the old fear of someone finding his shack, and Mommy returning for a brief moment. If there really were more people on their way, or even already here, he'd soon have to step up his game, be more proactive in keeping these awful people out of his territory.

Who knew how many would show up, expecting a good time out here on his land. Well, if they were stupid enough to come here, then he supposed he would show them a real good time, and afterwards take them home to meet Mommy.

But first, he had to eat. It got annoying, this constant battle to keep him self fueled for yet another day, and he vaguely wondered what it would be like to live a comfortable life in town like any other person. He was quite sure that stupid cheerleader and her jerk of a boyfriend never had to perch on a high branch and wait for prey to come ambling by. No, they could simply walk into any resturant and have a cheeseburger with a frosty chocolate milkshake as they recounted some inconsequential event from their day.

He tried to imagine that girl Chris Higgins tracking and then swiftly dispatching some unfortunate woodland creature with a makeshift weapon, blood getting all over her stylish clothing and in her pretty hair as she went through the actions of skinning, gutting and cutting. It was almost laughable, the thought of her going about what was a necessary daily chore for him but would surely be a disgusting, nausea-inducing task for her.

No, Chris would be in the diner with those other people, enjoying herself over one of the towering hot fudge sundaes he'd seen people enjoying there, never once giving any thought to how lucky she was with her comfortable life, with a nice home and pretty face. Nothing like his own twisted, deformed features and falling down shack in the woods. Oh, how she had screamed when she'd seen both, and truthfully how could he blame her?

Jason didn't really like to think about his encounter with Chris too much, all of that had been some time ago and was really better forgotten. Higgin's Haven had been empty for a while now, and he had not seen Chris herself around there for even longer. He still went into her old room every time he'd made the trek to the summer house to rifle through the pantry for sundry items, but she had obviously not stayed in the there for sometime.

Part of him was thankful she stayed away, he'd let her go that one time and fortunately it had not caused any real problems for him. No one had found him or his shack, if they'd even come looking. Yes, he decided, it was good she had never returned, because things were different now.

Before he'd been younger, simpler, and really only concerned with day-to-day living and waiting for mother to wake. Now he had a purpose, an agenda, a mission in life. That time she had screamed and cried and he'd felt bad, so in a rare display of mercy he had let her run out of his shack without giving chase, but if he encountered her now, well… he didn't really want to think about that either. He couldn't afford mercy now. Chris was wise indeed to not return.

He had been so wrapped up in thinking about Chris he had almost missed the deer that had come to browse the tufts of shady grass almost directly below his high perch. Now focused on the task at hand, he silently gauged the shot and flung his homemade spear, thankfully striking home. The deer attempted to bolt, but Jason's spear had struck an almost mortal blow, and now he leapt down to finish the job himself with his hunting knife.

As he surveyed his prize, his earlier pensive mood brightened considerably. A deer would provide enough meat for quite a few meals, thus saving him from a repeat performance for at least a few days. Even if he couldn't save the entire amount he did have that old metal cooler he'd stolen from town out beside his shack to keep excess meat from spoiling as rapidly as it would otherwise. That would certainly free up more time to keep an eye on this newest situation.

As he began to prepare the deer for butchering he thought about that girl he'd seen driving that red car and wondered if she was anything like Chris. He certainly hoped not, and resolved to make good on his earlier plans to find out if she would complement his shack's décor. Getting the deer skinned and cleaned would take some time, but it would make for an excellent meal. Tonight under the cover of darkness he would venture out and find out exactly what was going on up the road.


	12. Chapter 12

After his meal of venison, and still thinking about what he would do if he ever saw Chris Higgins again, Jason took the heavy flashlight he had stolen from the hardware store in town and crept through his woods toward Camp Crystal Lake. The place was now permanently condemned and as such no longer available to any aspiring do-gooders who really wanted nothing more than to open up their own den of sin and debauchery. He smiled. His mother had sure shown Steve Christy what could happen if you gathered a shapely harem under the guise of a youth camp.

And her son, well, her son had shown Christy's secret crush Alice what could happen as well. He smiled again at the memory of sticking her with the icepick, and only wished he had one of Christy's demise. His mother had gut-stabbed him and strung him up in a tree for Alice to find. He knew because he had found him, too, while tearing through the woods with his mother's head so the police wouldn't solve the mystery. Christy with his ridiculous mustache and yellow rain slicker. If he hadn't been in such a hurry, he would have desecrated his body in some way, poked sticks into his eyes, anything to disrespect him the way he had Jason. How dare that third rate charmer try and repeat his father's crime? Open a summer camp, invite children from far and wide, and then leave them all at the mercy of the deep, dark woods while you and your sweet cheeked flock danced naked in the spacious counselor cabins and fucked under a hot, mid-day sun?

Still, he was heading in the direction of that dead, sinful place because anyone who came to the area these days had to be doing so because of Camp Blood. Its pull was positively magnetic. Jason knew because he was nothing more than a shaving of metal himself, wandering over whenever he had a free moment to either relive his mother's death or his own. And the other spirits. Children and adults from decades and even centuries past who had all perished in the black lake. Sometimes he would take candles from the shrine and light them on a railing of a cabin, stare from the safety of his hood as the wax dripped down the boards and hardened in the breeze. He wondered what the pig cops who patrolled the area thought of the spent candles and his own carvings of _mother_into old cabin walls. Avoiding them was easy enough, same as it had been before he knew his mother had been stalking the area doing whatever she could to keep the place free of people. For him.

A sudden burst of guilt from a dark place inside of him nearly brought him to his knees then, and Jason stopped, grabbing a tree branch for support. All those years of just missing each other, golden opportunities slipping through fingers that held a container of poison, or can of gasoline. His mother had stayed here in this wretched forest for all those years, sneaking around by the light of a full moon, on a decades long mission to avenge him, when she could have gone to live with her cousin in California, spent lazy days relaxing on the beach. She could have even remarried, had more children who maybe would have been beautiful and fine, destined to be doctors, or Senators, or writers. But no. She had denied herself a happy life so that she could be the avenging angel of the toilet called Crystal Lake. She was an angel, and some scatterbrained girl who painted awful pictures had chopped her head off for her troubles. The world called _that_girl Hero and Pamela Voorhees Villain. Steve Christy was called unfortunate victim and Jason Voorhees urban legend older siblings used to scare younger ones.

As the righteous outrage swelled within his chest, Jason regained his composure enough to carry on with his march. He could see lights on the horizon, anyway, and knew he was close. There was a series of freshly painted buildings up ahead, and by God the car, that little red car he'd seen earlier on the dirt road, a cloud of billowing dust behind it. This was the place it had been racing, and the girl, too. A place called Packanack. It looked to be a close cousin of the camp soaked in blood.

He crept closer, spotting movement in the window of a small cabin. The ponytail girl was in there undressing, changing from her white shirt and blue shorts and into a red silk robe. He had been by this place before, more than a few times, but never had he seen people here. Now this sudden arrival peaked his interest. He spied on her as she slipped out of her bra and wrapped the robe around herself. He had seen Chris Higgins do the same from a different window miles away, but this was different. This girl in particular didn't live here, she had _come_here, and for a reason.

This place was a campsite, another goddamned campsite. He moved around the side of the cabin and saw more cars parked near her red bug. One was a big black truck. Another, bigger building covered in blue clapboard had several windows lit with dim yellow light. That's where the others were gathered. They were having themselves a little party. He could smell that strange smoke the teenagers in town liked so much, and the promise of sex in the air. Since they couldn't return to Camp Blood, these hellions had made a new den of sin, in his woods. Beside his lake.


	13. Chapter 13

Ginny could not help but smile as she pondered the coming weeks she would spend with Paul here in this tranquil forest setting. Crystal Lake was absolutely gorgeous, and she was sure that her every moment spent here would forge nothing but the fondest of memories she would certainly cherish forever. She could scarcely wait for the sun to rise, and with it bring a brand new day to seize, to laugh and frolic in the warm summer sun with Paul, to revel in those feelings first woken at Cranberry Lake that even now sang sweetly through her every fiber. To be young and in love, could anything else possibly be so thrilling?

The very moment she'd laid eyes upon Paul again after their lengthy separation she had resolved that indeed, she was ready to take it to next level with him and show him exactly the way he made her feel. Even as he'd chided her for her tardiness, her mind was not really focused on defending her late arrival, but more on just drinking him in; his perpetually tousled blond hair, those eyes that still held that impish gleam even as he'd chewed her out, his smell, absolutely everything she had missed about him.

She'd promised she would absolutely never be late ever again, and the she'd drawn him in for the long kiss she'd been dying for since she'd arrived, effectively silencing anything else he might have added to what he expected of his assistant. Thinking of that sorely overdue kiss now made her even more anxious for tomorrow to come so she could continue making up for lost time.  
Yes, she would see him in the morning, and she was more than ready to finish what they'd started back in Michigan, of that she was absolutely certain.

A sudden noise outside her cabin startled her out of a decidedly naughty thought of what she would soon be doing with Paul and led her to the cabin door to investigate the source of the noise. Ginny had always prided her self on being extremely rational and level-headed, but Paul's earlier campfire tale had to her embarrassment, frightened her just a bit. It certainly had not helped matters when that joker had leapt into the circle draped in skins, gibbering and waving that spear around in his best impression of the deranged, homicidal hermit Paul had just finished telling them about. Good old Paul, he really knew how to make an evening lively, but now as she looked out for whatever had just made that sound she somehow wished he had saved his Jason story for another night.

Her eyes scanned the darkness, revealing no masked spear-waving hooligan and no deformed, feral man-child for that matter either. Relief washed over her, and feeling just a bit foolish she turned to go back inside and back to her earlier fantasies. No sooner had she stepped back inside and let the screen door swing shut behind her than a hand shot out from the cover of darkness to clutch at her tightly. Her heart leapt in her chest as she was drawn in closer, and then…

"Paul, goddammit, what do you..!" she shouted as he chuckled lightly and her previous look of terror rapidly faded only to be replaced by her now indignant expression. He had not been able to resist slipping away to pay her a visit this evening, and had also not been able to resist the chance to yank her chain just a bit.

"Hey, hey, calm down. I'm not supposed to be fraternizing with the staff," He smiled as he drew her in for a continuation of their earlier friendly and long overdue intimate exchange.  
Ginny felt her annoyance fade just as rapidly as her fright had as she sighed into his warm embrace, thankful that if any fantasy were to come true tonight it was this one, and not that of a prowling mad man skulking outside of her cabin.

Jason felt himself grow angrier with every single action he witnessed through the cabin window, and he turned away, not needing to see anymore to know exactly where this was leading. He wasn't that naïve. The ponytail girl Ginny and that schmuck Paul, they were as filthy and base as anything he'd ever seen. How could he possibly not be enraged with the very idea of these people? They were dirty and perverse with absolutely no interest in anything whatsoever other than kissing, groping and pawing at each other blindly like deer in rut. It was bad enough that wastes of oxygen like this went on enjoying their totally self-absorbed lives while Mommy had none, but they dared to flaunt themselves here, in his woods of all places?

He was busy contemplating the best way to extinguish these two particular lover's flames when he suddenly realized he wasn't the only one standing out here veiled in darkness.

As his one good eye that was well accustomed to prowling about in the dark flickered over the man's form, he realized he knew this second party. He was certainly a bit older than the last time Jason had seen him, but it was unmistakably Ralph from town. He convulsively clutched his fists; furiously wondering if this sudden influx of trespassers would ever end.

He took a quiet step away back from the scene, thankful now for the years of hunting in these woods had taught him how to move about almost silently. What exactly should he do, now that he clearly was in a spot that could potentially lead to his undoing? If Ralph saw him there was no doubt his cover would be blown by loud, sputtering, alcohol-laced ranting. There was only one thing to do, he realized, after all he couldn't have the old drunk alerting the couple in the cabin of his presence. Besides, Ralph of all people should know better than to come here.

A length of old bailing wire caught his attention, glinting in the moonlight not far from where he stood almost if this were all predestined. Quietly he stooped to retrieve it, never once taking his eye from the old man propped against the very tree he'd hid behind when that bitch had walked outside earlier. Carefully, and oh-so-silently he crept up behind the tree and Ralph, rusty wire at the ready, waiting for just the right moment.

It was upon him sooner than he realized, and while the town drunk stood transfixed by the vulgar display showcased by the cabin window Jason quickly looped the wire around the man's neck and pulled it as tightly as he could. His stealthy maneuver proved fruitful, and the last, as well as the only sound Ralph made was a low, rattling groan that was never heard by the cabin's amorous occupants.


	14. Chapter 14

"What's the matter, Paul?" Ginny asked as she walked up to him. The sun was blazing already and the rest of the counselors-to-be were in the middle of sweating through their mid-morning hike, even Terri, who was wearing short-shorts that had less material than the bib her baby nephew wore during feedings. Ginny harbored no ill will, though. The girl seemed friendly enough, as did the others her boyfriend had assembled. No bad apples as far as she could tell. Not like Eddie, the punk at the Cranberry camp, who had needed Paul to literally put a foot up his ass to get him in line.

Paul had just hung up the phone in his office and now he was sitting behind the desk, staring at the spread papers but really miles away. When he saw that she had come in and heard her question as well as the screen door banging shut behind her, he snapped out of it. His eyes looked worried.

"Ah, it's just Brad," he said quietly, drumming his fingers on the desk absent-mindedly. "He promised he'd be here by now, with his girlfriend Teresa, and so far nothing. I just called his apartment and there was no answer."

Ginny sat on the edge of the desk and patted one of his hands. "Well so they're on their way."

Paul nodded, still worried.

"This place _is_pretty far off the beaten path, you know. Not to a rugged, manly-man like you, but a city slicker like Brad must be at some gas station about now asking for directions."

"I guess so," Paul said. "I just wish he'd drop me a line and let me know that the two of them aren't dead in a ditch somewhere."

"Well honey," she said, smiling and leaning in for a quick kiss, "that's just the way men are. No thoughts for anyone but themselves."

The pounding in his temples got worse when he saw them hiking. A whole bunch of young bodies playfully bumping into and rubbing all over each other as they made their way through his wilderness on a scenic daytrip. Ponytail girl - who was called Ginny, he'd picked up that tidbit earlier - left them at one point, rushing back to the office to meet up with that wanna be Steve Christy punk Holt. There was another one, Terri her name was, who was flaunting her backside like it was a prize she had just won on a game show, and all the men had their own disgracefully tight jeans and short-shorts on full display. They were laughing as a group, each one blending into another so that the combined sound filled his forest and drowned out crickets, the sighing of leaves and even the songs his mother used to sing to him, which played in his head on a repeating loop.

As the singing ceased and his mother's voice became that of a demon, gutteral and choked with vile swamp weeds, which grew out of a black heart and pushed their way up through the throat, Jason Voorhees thought to himself that it was going to be quite the pleasure to kill each and every one them with this camp's own weapons, and a few of his own. He would attack each one alone, in the dark, either by the lake or in the supposed safety of that big, blue lodge.

Now, as he tore himself away from their merry little sojurn, he decided that it was time to get one of his weapons from the shack, maybe do a little daylight killing before lunch. Dare he risk it? They knew the legend that was him, had gathered round a campfire the night before gabbing about how it was nice and safe in these parts now that Pamela Voorhees was dead, but if even one of them went missing Holt might refuse to follow that completely in Steve Christy's footsteps and put an end to the whole thing. And Jason couldn't have that. These people had stomped their covered-with-city-dogshit shoes all over his wilderness. The red-headed putz with the spear had made a joke out of the story of him and his mother. They were planning to open another camp and invite more children to be gobbled up by that pit of a lake.

For all of those reasons they would die.

He ran through the woods quietly, taking a short cut to his shack that wouldn't take him by any of the Packanack buildings. As he crossed a dirt trail seldom used he found himself passing right in front of a police car slowly cruising along. As he dashed into the foilage he heard the squealing of brakes and then a shout.

"Hey! Hey you!"

He kept running, smiling beneath the bag as he realized his system was free from panic. This fat cop was the sheriff of these parts, was he? He was in charge? Jason stifled a laugh. _NO, FAT MAN. THIS IS MY HOME, AND YOU KNOW SOMETHING? __**YOU'RE**__ THE TRESPASSER._

After splashing his way through the big puddle that was a nice little bathtub when full of fresh rainwater, Jason slid straight into a leafy thicket near a stand of big trees and waited. His shack was up ahead, and like a lighting bolt to a metal rod, the cop went right to it. Jason's heart filled with fury the moment the pig pushed open the front door, and slowly he rose to his feet. As he made his way around the side of the shack, he bent down and retrieved a large hammer from the toolbox he'd stolen from Higgins Haven. The cop was banging around in there, disturbing the peace of his and his mother's home, and that had written his death warrant.

He appeared at the entrance just as the cop was pulling open the door to his mother's shrine. Blasphemy! How dare he even approach it? His fingers tightened on the handle of the hammer, his hand appreciating its divine weight. The cop was frozen in the doorway of the shrine in shock

"Oh my GOD."

and Jason crept up behind him, slamming the claw of the hammer deep into the back of his skull.


	15. Chapter 15

The lawman crumpled to the ground in a heap, that look of abject shock frozen on his face even in death. He twitched for just a moment, and then became still as blood began to pool quickly beneath his broken head. Jason wrenched the hammer from his skull, the action producing a sickly wet slurp as the tool was pulled free of it's mooring.

He stood there for a long moment, still holding the bloody hammer almost wishing the cop would spring back to life just so he could bury the claw end into his skull a second time. The rage was still there, although killing the officer had taken the edge of somewhat, it still ate it him that anyone would dare to come into his home. He looked over to Mommy with a raspy sigh of relief. He'd done the right thing and struck this man dead so that he could never go back to his station and file a report on what he'd seen. They were both still safe from outside interference, and that meant that he would still be able to clear his wood of those disgusting people he'd seen hiking earlier.

The rage slowly left him as he drug the dead man closer to Mother's altar, depositing him right next to that bitch Alice in the floor. Now she could finally have some company, not that she deserved it. There would be more arriving this evening, he thought, and he needed to prepare. The police cruiser was still out there and it would have to be moved. He took a last glance over at Mommy before leaving to go take care of the cop car, and he felt a wave of pride rush him. He was doing right, Mommy was pleased.

Jason traced his steps back to the abandoned police car, and as he had done with the Bronco he pulled the gearshift into the slot that read 'D' and eased it further up the dirt road. He didn't want to drive it into the woods just yet, the fat man had left it parked too close to the shack for Jason's comfort. Experimentally he pressed the gas pedal as he'd often seen his mother do, and was rewarded when the car lurched forward at a quicker pace.

It was sort of fun to play with the features in the cabin of the cop car, so he indulged himself in discovering what the various pedals and switches did. At one point he accidentally switched the siren on, and after scrambling to switch it off he lost interest in the car's features and concentrated on getting the cruiser into a more remote location.

As he prepared to ease it off into the woods, a loud voice issued from the radio, startling him and nearly causing him to collide with a nearby tree.

"Winslow, what is your location? Sheriff Winslow? Do you copy? "

The cop's radio crackled, the reception becoming even spottier the further he drove into the woods. The words were harder to make out now, and he chose to ignore the static plagued words and he settled on a good place to leave the car. Jason was now glad to be out of the car, the crackling voice grated at him, and while he didn't understand much of the transmission he did surmise that he should prepare for yet another visitor soon.

Whatever. He would deal with the owner of that garbled voice when he dared to show his face in these woods, the same way he had dealt with the couple from the truck and the cop and the same way he planned to deal with those punks that had made the fatal mistake of trying to open up another camp. As he walked back to his shack, he resolved to go through his cache of weapons, and develop some kind of strategy for the coming night when he would show them all just what to expect when they trespassed on the land he'd come to claim.


	16. Chapter 16

Deborah could only kick at the dirt and watch as Clark rumaged around in the big cardboard box. Their car was parked a few feet away, next to the unmarked trail that led from his family's summer cottage and into deep woods. This was her first time here, at the place called Crystal Lake, but everything he had said had been right: the place was stunning. Beyond the narrow trails were walls of trees that blocked out all but the most determined rays of the summer sun. Deer peeked out from leafy thickets and then darted off silently, disappearing into the woods. She wondered if, in their animal minds, they suspected danger in Clark's box.

"Here we go," he called out, hauling his long sought after treasure from the container.

Deborah wrinkled her nose as dust mites flew in all directions like the embers of a campfire. The tickle in her nose suggested a sneeze coming. Clark actually did, but quickly turned away from her so that he simply sprayed the forest.

"Bless you," she replied. "You shouldn't be around all that dust. Your allergies are going to torture you tonight."

"They're doing it already," he said. "But it's well worth it. Look at the _size_of this baby. It's like lifting a dumb-bell."

What he held was not a gun or weapon of any kind, but something labeled a Taiwanese Chandelier. It looked just like a real chandelier except all the candles were replaced with various fireworks. Deborah shook her head slowly, a smile playing at the edges of her mouth. Boys and their toys. Perhaps the deer had been right to flee. This beast sure looked lethal, even more deadly than the rifles that were in Clark's father's display case back at the cottage.

His grin as he held it up to her made him look seven years old again, and even though these loud things were not her thing, she wasn't about to spoil her boyfriend's awesome moment. The deer were all gone now, and there were no people around. Why not set off a few rockets? Life was meant to be lived, and this sure was living. Even now Deborah could smell the nearby lake, fresh, clean water that lapped against sandy shores just meant for bare feet to make prints. That was their next destination after setting off a few chandeliers in this little alcove of woods, and she could hardly wait. Her parents had no summer home of their own, and she'd never even seen a lake. Her own inner seven year old was beginning to jump up and down.

"Okay," Clark said, placing the chandelier on a barren patch of dirt like an offering to a god of the wilderness, "let's spark this beauty." Deborah came closer, wrapping an arm around her boyfriend's waist as he lit a match.

Jason was aware of the dimming light caused by a setting sun as he made his way through the woods, nice and at least semi-clean again after washing the cop's blood from his hands. That puddle had sure done the trick, as it always did. And after tonight's massacre, he was going to treat himself to a moonlit bath in the lake itself. He was sure going to need it, too, he thought savagely, picturing each of their dead bodies carefully arranged around his mother's shrine. If offering Alice Hardy had not done the trick and sparked his mother's spirit back to life, then this sure would. How many of them were over there at the place called Packanack? At least a dozen. He had his work cut out for him, and that had to be what mattered, that he exhausted himself body and soul in dedication to his mother's memory. Alice's execution had been righteous, but a single killing could never be enough. He knew that now. To perform magic like a resurrection, there had to be multiple sacrifices.

Perhaps it had something to do with the date of his cursed birth, Friday the 13th? It had also been the date of his mother's murder, and there looked to be thirteen counselors all gathered together at that den of sex and sin. He rubbed his newly clean hands together in anticipation of the coming bloodbath.

Suddenly there was a hideous noise that erupted out of nowhere, freezing him in his tracks. Jason saw something trailing sparks tear into the canopy of leaves overhead, sending a bird into mad frenzy as it shot out of a nest on a high branch.


	17. Chapter 17

Lt. Ed Tierney was giving the next watch commander briefing before shift change when Cpl. Sam Harris walked up and tapped his shoulder, "L.T., you got a minute?"

"Yeah, Sam." Tierney replied, he knew Sam Harris would not interrupt him doing the pass-on unless it was something urgent, so he looked over at the oncoming Lieutenant, Lt. Phillip Christy, and just said, "Stand by, Phil."

He walked with Harris a few feet away from Christy when Harris motioned him away, "What is it, Sam?" He asked, realizing right away Sam was worried.

"It's Larry, Sir." Harris replied, referring to Deputy Stan 'Larry' Laurence, the Deputy Tierney had assigned to patrol the area out around the old camp and this new Packanack Lodge, "Sir, Brenda just called and said he hasn't been home and hasn't called. He's two hours overdue, Sir."

Tierney hung his head and sighed, this wasn't a good sign. "Okay, go ahead and take your car, start cruising around the lake and have Roberts cruise the bars on the outskirts of town. I'll call Mike Garris and have him go check the lounge at the Thunderbird Inn on the Interstate." Stan Laurence, once a Sergeant with a promising career, had one Hell of a drinking problem, one that had already cost him the aforementioned stripes and, if Phil Christy had his way, would cost him his career if he pulled another drunk on duty.

"Yes, Sir." Harris nodded, "And if we find him?"

"Sober him up and drop him off at his house with Brenda before her hair falls out." Tierney replied, "God knows Larry's already made it turn gray ten years early. Oh, Sam..."

"Yeah, boss?" Sam answered, he and Tierney, along with a few others, were very much dedicated to the idea of Larry making it to his pension in six months, even if he did probably deserve to lose his badge.

"Have that new kid, Cologne, go check the Robin Hood Lounge." Tierney instructed, Cologne was way too gung-ho for his tastes, but he felt the kid had potential and was team player if nothing else.

"Yes, Sir." Harris nodded, running out the door to his squad car like his ass was on fire.

Great, Tierney thought, just what I need today, Some fool trying to open another camp on Crystal Lake and one of my jackasses using it as an excuse to pull a drunk! "So, where were we, Phil?" Tierney asked, continuing his briefing as though nothing had ever happened.


	18. Chapter 18

"Look at it go, baby! Oh yeah!" Clark whooped as the chandelier shot up into the canopy, furiously hissing and showering sparks down to the ground reminiscent of a miniature meteor shower. Deborah smiled, enjoying both the spectacular view and Clark's childlike enthusiasm. What was it about fire that turned men into mischievous boys? She'd seen it many times growing up, her brothers lighting balls of crumpled newspaper aflame to watch the flames lick, dance over and ultimately consume it, only to produce yet another sheet from the discarded classified ads.  
As the saying went, boys would be boys.

Clark immediately lit another chandelier, but soon found his eyes wandering from the pyrotechnic marvel towards Deborah instead.  
She was every bit as stunning as the fireworks, if less flashy. Her eyebrow quirked, and as if reading his mind she shifted against him playfully. Now the fireworks were entirely forgotten, his attention squarely focused on his girlfriend and the many things her slightly crooked smile promised.

"You know, we're all alone out here," she murmured, and as they made their gradual descent to the ground they paid no mind to the last of the sputtering and popping.

*  
The last efforts of the chandelier had not gone unnoticed by Jason, however. His eye widened at the display unfolding before him, the writhing pair upon the ground, doing the bad thing. The foreign sound had led him here to the small clearing, and although he had not quite been expecting this, in a way it came as no real surprise. He found himself thankful that in a moment of pique he had liberated the tire tool from the police cruiser before leaving the vehicle in the woods.

The weight of the pilfered tool dangling from his belt loop was somehow reassuring as that feeling of rage that he was rapidly growing familiar with began to creep up on him once again. Did anything other than this act matter to these people? From what he'd seen in the last day, apparently not. Filthy, all of them.

He slowly slid the tool from the loop as their heated cries became steadily louder, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Stealth had proven to be an invaluable asset to him, and Jason was no fool when it came to sticking with operations that had proven to be effective. There were two to dispatch after all, and he really didn't want a repeat of the incident with the Bronco girl, not right now. Even though this business was still fairly new to him, he was discovering that it did share many similarities with the hunting he was well accustomed to.

When the noises became so loud he was sure there was no way they could be possibly be aware of anything other than their current activity he crept out from his cover of foliage and advanced on the couple, hand gripping the tire tool tightly as his earlier patience gave way to the bloodlust.

He quickly put the tool to use, bringing it down on the man first who mercifully never even saw it coming. The blunt end connected with the back of his head creating an interesting crunching sound as bone splintered immediately followed by the shriek of the girl as the force of the blow caused his forehead to collide with hers.

Deborah saw stars for a brief moment even as she struggled under the now dead weight pinning her to the ground, hysterically yelping as soupy gray matter began to leak from it's damaged casing to splatter wetly around her.

"Ohmygodohmygodno...!" She cried as Jason loomed overhead, watching as she tried desperately to heave her dead boyfriend off of her. He wouldn't have to worry about this one running away, he could afford to wait for a clear shot at her with the tire tool.

"Pleasepleasepleasenodon'tohmygodno,"  
It brought him back to the girl from the other day, how she had pled with him near the end. Would they always do that, make those desperate cries, begging, pleading, and crying? He hoped not, it was very distracting and truthfully it made him feel a little guilty. Like with Chris…

No, this was entirely different. Guilt didn't have a place in this. She was bad, just like all of the others that had come here, and for that she'd die.

Decisively, he brought the tool down once more, and then she was quiet.


	19. Chapter 19

Ginny was starting to get angry with Paul. It was the first time as well, which made it a horrible experience. Somehow, whenever you just started dating someone, you could never picture yourself ever fighting with that person, ever seeing a smug expression on a face that filled your fantasies. But Paul had a smug look right now, in the bar called Maxie's, and she found herself wanting to tell him not to bother visiting her cabin when they got back to Packanack later that night.

The reason for her anger, and Paul's superior attitude, an attitude born of a male desire to discount any story that didn't have photographic evidence to back it up, was Jason Voorhees. He was a boy who had supposedly drowned long ago, before she was even born. His mother had gone mad with grief and slaughtered the neglectful counselors she held responsible, as well as several others who tried re-opening that now legendary camp. But nobody had ever found poor, tragic Jason's body, and Crystal Lake wasn't _that_big. Combine that non-photographed fact with her own studies of child psychology, and it was a topic that sparked an interest in her that nothing at Cranberry Lake ever had, save the little sweethearts that ran along the sun baked docks and flung themselves into the jewel-shimmering waters.

What if Jason had survived his near drowning, had somehow crawled out of the lake on a secluded shore in a frenzied state from his brush with death? The camp had shut down the day of his disappearance, so even if he had managed to make it back there he would find no-one waiting. The woods were dark, and they were deep, according to the famous poem, but there would have been nothing lovely about them to Jason on that frightful day. She knew how it sounded, of course, and her own sense of logic gave a shout of protest in the back of her mind. But if, _if_, Jason had a strong survival instinct to override his tender age, _if_ he had not been targeted by any wild animals, _if_he had been able to find shelter, then technically, that child could still be out there in the wilderness, forever young in a huge, deformed body. Crying for his mother. Cooking like a roast in the oven without air conditioning during the summer months, the cold vapors of winter wrapped around him while everyone else got to have warm, loving arms. Being forced to gore and then devour wild animals and peat moss. Emptying his bladder and bowels in the foliage. Going through puberty without even an erotic magazine for relief.

If nothing else, it reminded a person how extremely fortunate they were to be a part of society, and here Paul was chalking her ruminations up to being drunk. It was insulting. Yeah, he was just playing around with Ted, a compassionate man who was a bit frightened of that and so played up the inner hunter/gatherer that hid inside all men, and perhaps she was simply taking it too hard. But damn it, this was important to her, and it extended even to her up and coming duties as camp counselor. The lack of humanity shown to Jason in his short life had been precisely the cause of all the bloodshed the area had seen in the past twenty-odd years. Where other lakes were peaceful summer retreats for city folk, Crystal was forever haunted by people run through with arrows and sliced through the pulse with hunting knives. It was depressing is what it was. Her brother loved science fiction stories of future civilizations who had cast aside malice and prejudice in favor of flying cars and talking robots, and here they were still stuck in the dark ages of human behavior.

"He must have seen his mother get killed, and all just 'cause she loved him. I mean isn't that what her revenge was all about? Her sense of loss? Her rage at what she thought happened? Her love for him?"

Some of the children at Cranberry Lake had parents who, upon arriving to pick them up at the end of the summer season, only cared about discovering how many blue ribbons and trophies had been won, and nothing about if their offspring had actually enjoyed their time there. Funny how a murderess like Pamela Voorhees had been filled with such bright, shining love for her child that she had taken the future decades of her life and thrown them straight into the incinerator, burning to cinders any second chance at happiness she could have had in order to patrol the very place he had died, keeping it free of others for the sake of his memory.

After killing the two lovers, he knew it was time for the others. The ones who gathered in the big blue lodge at the place called Packanack. It was fully dark now, and after hiding the bodies in the foliage, Jason made his way to Crystal Lake with his machete. He would gut them all for mother, and then have a proper bath. After that was something left up to fate. That many murders would surely attract the same amount of attention as had happened after his mother's rampage. He had no idea how he would handle cops stomping through the woods looking for the perpetrator, but as had always occurred during the long, lonely years in the woods, he would think of something.

When he arrived at the lake near a narrow path skirting the edge of it, he was completely unprepared for what he saw. A beautiful girl with auburn hair just like Chris Higgins was stripping nude. In all the times he had seen Chris through her bedroom window he had seen her naked once or twice, but that had been at a distance and through a pane of glass. This was shockingly vivid, and the sight of her tan, toned body took his breath away. He forgot all about his bloody hands and his bloodlust. She strode into the water with a natural confidence but also with a sense of slight fear, head turning right and left as she made sure no-one was watching. He leaned the machete against a tree and continued his stare while she dove under the surface and then shot back up, bursting through the water like a creature from a fantasy.

Then he heard a low whistle and a _good lord_from nearby. It was one of the other punks, a dark haired boy with a constant smirk on his lips. This boy was appreciating the view from a nearby stand of trees, and Jason watched him slowly sneak over to the pile of clothes lying in the sand. Gathering them into his arms the punk snuck back to the trees, awaiting the girl's eventual discovery. Jason grabbed the machete, instantly remembering his mission.

The girl would soon make her discovery, and then she and the punk together would make another, more deadly one.


	20. Chapter 20

The auburn-haired girl lithely swam towards the shoreline and at once emerged from the lake, rising from the waters appearing almost an incarnation of Venus, water trickling and beading on perfect flesh. The pleasure of her refreshing dip in the lake was immediately displaced by the troubling absence of her cast off clothing. With arms folded over her breasts her eyes desperately scanned the darkness hoping to spot the missing pile of clothes.

"Looking for something?"

Cheeky smirk plastered on his lips, the boy in the blue shirt tossed a pair of black jersey pants to ground before her. The girl rolled her eyes and huffed in annoyance as she retrieved the item and turned around to pull them on. She grabbed her blue towel and slung it over her shoulders before whirling around to confront her tormenter.

"Give me my shirt, Scott!" Exasperated now, she lunged for the captive clothing. Chuckling, he darted off into the trees, the rest of her clothing in tow. She followed after quickly, wet hair whipping behind her as she angrily shouted for him to return her things immediately.

Jason noted with interest that the route they were taking led straight to a hidden snare that he had set out a few days prior in hope of snagging an easy meal. Well, even if it had not provided him with meat, it might very well come through for him now and net him a fairly easy kill. He waited a moment before pursuing, hoping his hunch would prove true.

"It's no longer funny, Scott." Jason heard her say as he apparently thwarted yet another of her attempts to wrest the clothes from him. He wasn't close enough to quite see what was going on, but there was a rustling sound, and then the telltale swoosh and resulting shriek told Jason all he needed to know. Ha, he had the obnoxious bastard now. The time and effort he'd put into laying that snare had paid off in spades.

"Goddamn that Paul and his wilderness bullshit!" Scott yelled as he swung helplessly inverted. As the shock dissipated, Terri took a step back of her own to take in the sight of this perpetual joker undone for once. A smirk of her own settled on her lips, as she retrieved her white top.

"I oughta let you hang, pervert."

"Come on Ter, give me a break." All of that blood rushing to his head was quite unpleasant, not to mention that his predicament somehow managed to be uncomfortable and embarrassing all at once. The rope continued to sway, and

"You gonna cut the crap?" Oh, that Scott. Of course he would promise anything to be out of the snare, but perhaps this time he really had learned his lesson. In truth, even though he had stolen her clothes, it had all been in fun and he really didn't deserve to hang upside down in a tree until he passed out. She could never be that cruel anyway.

"Anything, I promise." Yes, this time he really meant it. How to get him down, now…A knife, yes, she needed a knife to cut the rope. Surely there would be one in the cabin. She needed to hurry and go find it, but before doing so she couldn't resist a final parting shot.

"Don't go anywhere." With that she pulled the top over her head and sprinted back down the path to hopefully procure a knife to cut Scott down.

"Ha ha." Terri quickly vanished from view, leaving him alone in the dark, literally twisting in the wind. When she returned with the knife to cut him down and all his blood was circulating again he was going to march straight up to Paul and tell him exactly where he could shove all this kumbayah horse shit. Seriously, who the fuck just left shit like this laying around for anyone to just wander into?

Jason might have missed the satisfaction of seeing the punk actually step into the snare, but he had found the past few minutes quite amusing. As much as he'd enjoyed the spectacle, the ball was now in his court. Although the girl had gone off in search of something to cut the rope and let this clown go free, he would spare her the trouble with a cut of his own. The handle of the machete was warm, at that moment feeling like a divine extension of the hand that gripped it, and then the bloodlust became undeniable.

Almost of it's own accord his free hand shot out to clutch a handful of that thick, dark hair and then the machete followed suit, slicing an almost painfully neat red line across his quarry's throat. Blood began to well from the wound, aided by gravity quickly flowing red and slick into Scott's face, soaking his hair and puddling onto the ground beneath. The scent of copper hung exhilaratingly heavy in the air, so thick that he could almost taste it.

Enough time to admire his handiwork later, however. The skinny dipping tramp was tromping back up the path with that knife, not that she would be needing it. Retreating to his earlier hiding spot, he waited for the girl to make her inevitable, and quite messy discovery.


	21. Chapter 21

The hard bodied, skinny dipping girl named Terri was now in his mother's altar with the tubby cop and Alice, sweet homely Alice, who had screamed so beautifully that night five years ago. Christ, had it been that long? His memory of it was fresh as the bedsheets at Higgins Haven, as the clothes on a dozen different outdoor lines that he sometimes raided. Standing there now, in the shrine, appreciating his own offerings to Mother, Jason allowed the memory of all three killings to soothe him. Terri had belted out a powerful scream as well, her pretty, vapid face suddenly alive with terror. The machete had sliced her stomach, quick and deep, and she had fallen on the dirt trail like a sack of bricks. The sack of shit cop had made a photo worthy face of agony when he sunk the hammer into the back of his melon head and then fallen as well. The fragment of psyche that writhed in misery at the sight of torn bodies and mouths stretched wide in either horror or pain, mouths that had once been kissed by loved ones awaiting their return, that part of him was in as much agony as these dead victims right now. But he reminded himself that these people were not innocents. They were here to turn their backs on flailing children and then jab blades into the necks of mothers who came swooping in like the avenging angels they were. They deserved no mercy.

The only reason Terri was here, in this most sacred of rooms, was because she would have been exactly like Claudette, the female whore who had run off with that male whore Barry, gleefully skipping through the trees to their sex bed as he was being eaten alive by the black lake. He almost wished he could speak now, so that he could use his voice to mark the occasion, explain to Mother that she was not here to be ogled by him and satisfy his burning urges. But really, what words could he say that would ever bring his mother back? No, the bodies and the bodies alone would spark her resurrection, like flint scraped across steel. He did want to say there would be more, however, so that Mother didn't think this piddly offering was it.

_Oh yes, there would be so many more. They were up at the camp now, and it was time for him to end the break and go back to work._

Taking one more look at Terri, lying there as if in a pot smoke induced dream, the cop, who would have probably made guttural noises while watching her nude display and then tossed her into the back of his police car because _we can't have skinny dippers disturbing the peace of the watery crypt called Crystal Lake_, and Alice, who was now uglier than even him now, Jason left the shrine and closed the door behind him. The machete was leaning against the old, splintered dresser by the front door, and he grabbed it on his way out.

Mark couldn't believe that Vicki could see past his disability and to the person he was without the chair. Ever since that damn accident, when a beer truck of all things had slammed into him and thrown him from the motorcycle like a rag doll, there had been bright panic in his heart whenever he thought about the opposite sex. This was because Tiffany, his girlfriend at the time, had taken one look at his twisted, splotchy purple legs in the hospital and vowed to leave him. She hadn't said that out loud, and had lingered at his bedside for a few weeks, but that first time he had known. The eyes gave away what the lips would not. Her disappearance from his life, which she chalked up to a "full plate" of schoolwork, her job at the bank and various other things, had about torn him in half. That might have been for the better, though, since he could leave his shattered legs behind.

That was bullshit, though. He was going to walk again, he had never been more sure of anything in his life. His strength was not just contained in fit biceps and a rock hard chest. The heart that beat underneath was strong as well, and the spirit that made that heart pump was unshakable. Even when the doctors told him he was in this chair for life, even on that dark day, he had known he would walk again. His spirit, which was more the essence of a person than simple flesh, would not allow him to view life from anything less than a height of six feet.

Now he was waiting for Vicki to get back from her cabin, where she was freshening up. Not that there was any need. She was beautiful, with dark, sultry hair that framed a porcelain face that could be innocent one moment, throw-your-pants-across-the-room-and-dance-bare-assed to the Rolling Stones the next. He wanted her badly. And if he wasn't mistaken, he thought he heard her out on the porch at that very moment. She was probably playing a little game, and he wondered if she had on pants. He rolled himself across the cozy main room of the lodge and out the door. A soft rain was falling, and electric blue lightning lit up the dark night.

From what he could tell, Vicki was not here, but he sensed that someone was. Rolling his chair to a stop in the middle of the covered wooden porch, Mark looked around slowly. She was going to come jumping over the railing any minute now, a mischievous look in her brown eyes as she showed him just what was under her sweater and jeans.

"Vicki?" he called out as thunder boomed.

He had just enough time to wonder what color her panties were when a machete came crashing into his face, _thwacking_through his cheekbone. Pain erupted in his head like a volcano, spewing molten stars that danced across his field of vision. As he rolled backwards toward the large flight of stairs he knew were right there, he could see a tall figure dressed in blue overalls, a red flannel shirt and with a white pillowcase over its head standing beside the porch railing. It was the last thing he saw.

Then he fell backwards down the huge staircase. He fell for what seemed like forever, but by the time he reached the bottom he was dead anyway.


	22. Chapter 22

Mother would be pleased. Since his quick detour to his shack to deposit the girl who evoked memories of Claudette at her shrine, he'd already done away with two more, and it only seemed to become easier. Dispatching the girl who'd had the audacity to leave her cabin dressed only in a sweater and panties to retrieve her hairbrush had been almost laughably easy, as easy as the girl herself, most likely. Immediately afterwards, he'd stalked back to the lodge he'd seen her exit to sink the machete deep into the face of her wheelchair bound paramour, silently  
watching as the force of the death blow sent the chair flying down the stairs.

He couldn't help but feel a little proud of these two quick, efficient kills, as he turned away from the stairs Mark had rolled down, and made his way through the open door and into the lodge. Immediately upon entering, he was greeted by both cries of passion and the very spear and mask that obnoxious asshole had used to mock him the other night at the campfire. The distorted rubber features of the mask taunted him, and anger quickly displaced pride as he scowled beneath his hood recalling the night before.

It had been insulting enough to listen to the whooping and laughing, to learn that he had been relegated to the role of a campfire boogeyman, but seeing the ugly mask up close infuriated him all the more. Truthfully, it was no more horrifying than his own features, but how dare they make a joke out of him? It stirred up memories of years of teasing that still felt painfully fresh, and only strengthened his resolve to wipe out every last one of these disrespectful, shameless wastes of flesh.

In a fit of anger he snatched the mask from the spear, and flung it onto the stairs where it landed with a smack. A legend, indeed, he though as he clutched the spear so tightly his nails dug into his palm. He'd show them exactly how real Jason Voorhees was, a far cry from the skin draped, fright-masked sham of the previous night. Stepping over the mask, he climbed the staircase leading to the room he'd heard the telltale sounds of sex issuing from.

He could hear them even now, just beyond that white door, reveling in debauchery, writhing about as they indulged in the very act that had distracted Barry and Claudette as he'd sucked in lungful after murderous lungful of burning, sour water. What did it matter that the ugly Voorhees boy was struggling in the water, when they had warm skin to caress, and intimate areas to explore? Surely he'd be fine out there for just a little while longer…

It was all he could do to keep steady as the rage built to an almost intolerable level, nails cutting into flesh as he slowly opened the door revealing the source of both the sounds he'd heard and his ire. Raising the spear above his head, he advanced upon them, too angry to even bother with any sort of stealth at this point. The girl's eyes opened just in time to witness him standing above her, shoving the spear down even as she opened her mouth to cry out in fear.

The deed done, he let go of the spear and stepped back from the dying lover's last choked cries, taking a deep breath hoping to dispel the blood pounding in his head. He'd brought the spear down with such force in his rage that it had not only impaled them both but had penetrated the mattress and sunk into the floorboards beneath. Ironically, as much as he'd wanted them to suffer in his red rage, the savagery of the blow had already rendered them quiet, as well as quite dead.

It was just as well however, as there was still work to be done, and after all nothing was quite as efficient as killing two birds with one stone.


	23. Chapter 23

Ginny and Paul arrived back at Packanack in one of the worst thunderstorms she'd ever seen. The heavy rain acted as a shroud around the place, obliterating the view farther than ten feet away. The trees that pressed in on all sides of the camp were being blown sideways, and their wildly flailing branches made them look like drowning victims, or people in the midst of epileptic fits.

They hurried inside the main lodge to find the lights still burning brightly, but the place was empty. Ginny saw the video games and spent pot on the table, and as she headed upstairs to check for the others she saw Ted's fright mask on the stairs. It was strange the place was so deserted, especially during a storm of this magnitude. She had expected to come inside and see most of them here, gathered around a roaring fire or slow dancing, maybe just pleasantly baked and enjoying the warm, cozy confines of the lodge.

She saw that the door to the room at the top of the stairs was half open, and weak light spilled through the crack. Easing it open, full of dread and not knowing why, Ginny saw that the room was as empty as the rest of the place, but that the bedsheets were literally soaked with what sure looked like blood.

"Paul!" she cried out.

He bounded up the stairs in a flash and was suddenly at her side, stopping short when he saw the spectacle.

"What is this, a joke?" he said.

"They wouldn't do anything like this," she replied.

Her answer came not from Paul but the lights themselves, which winked out and plunged the bloody bedroom into darkness. Paul switched on the flashlight he had brought with him and moved back into the upstairs hall, Ginny following on his heels. Together they went downstairs slowly, noticing that the lights were still on in the kitchen.

"Must be the main fuse again," Paul offered.

"Paul, what's going on here?" Ginny asked with apprehension beginning to soak into her voice the way that red stuff had soaked into the sheets.

"_Nothing_," he said sharply. Even if this was some sort of demented practical joke, Paul would never admit it. He didn't like playing into anyone's hands. To scare him, Ginny thought, you were going to have to come up with something much better than bloody bedsheets and a dark house.

She went to a window and peered out, seeing nothing but a deeper darkness and the swaying trees.

"Where is everybody?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said, checking the fuse box on the far wall. He stole a glance out his own window. "The rain's stopping, we'll go look for them."

As Ginny came into the room where Paul was fiddling with the lights, she was aware of another presence. A voyeur was here somewhere, lurking in the darkness, watching them. She could smell strange things, like candle wax, dirt, and decay.

"Paul, there's someone in this room..."

A tall shape rose out of the darkness with a long spear.

"Paul, there's someone in this fucking room!"

The figure lurched forward and thrust the spear at Paul, who managed to dodge out of the way. The two of them grappled with each other ferociously, and for one absurd moment were locked in a bear hug. Finally they fell to the floor, the phantom attacker getting the better of her boyfriend and winding up on top. Ginny was too shocked to do anything but slowly back away as the darkness swallowed them. She saw flashes of fist as the man hit Paul, and heard guttural grunts as they struggled. Then all was quiet.

"Paul..." she said, nearly breathless as she creeped forward. "_Paul_? Answer me!"

The man suddenly popped up before her like a jack in the box, a bone white pillowcase with one

_Oh GOD, why was there only one?_

large oval cut into it for an eye. Ginny screamed and ran for her life.


	24. Chapter 24

Darting into the wood-paneled bathroom, Ginny flung the door shut behind her, pulling against the doorknob with all her might in anticipation of his pursuit. She stood there for what seemed like forever, clutching the brass knob of the only barrier between her and the psychopath in the other room. Her eyes flickered to the plaid curtains fluttering gently in the breeze from the slightly open window.

Cautiously, she slowly reached out towards the window, never looking away from the door. The lack of noise from the adjoining room was jarring, setting her hair on end. So quiet…Oh, god, Paul… she had to run, find help. As she inched towards the windows, any hope of escape was cut short by the crash of breaking glass.

She shrieked and spun on her heels as a hand shot through the broken window reaching menacingly towards her. Running through the darkened lodge as if Hell itself were fast on her heels, she found herself in the kitchen, a room that thank god had a lock on the door. With shaking hands she slid the bolt into place, and quickly moved away. No sooner than she moved away from the door to her horror she heard the sound of the doorknob twisting and turning uselessly, his entry barred by the sliding lock.

She could barely tear her eyes from this ominous sight when moonlight glinted across the array of kitchen implements in their racks, a large kitchen knife beckoning her. Grabbing the knife, she waited breathlessly for him to force the lock and make his way into the room. The knob remained still for a moment, Had he given up and gone back outside to try the window again? sweat beaded her brow as she held the knife as the ready, her lips set in a grim line of determination.

Again the doorknob began to turn, more aggressively this time, as she poised to lunge with the blade as soon as the door opened. Just then a rusty pitchfork burst through the door as if it were nothing, the shock tearing another cry from her throat as she turned to flee yet again. Panic ruled her as she darted to the pantry door in a desperate bid for somewhere, anywhere to hide, only to be greeted by the glassy-eyed corpse of an old man whose neck bore the terrible, red, pencil thin marks that told of his own lethal encounter with the man now pursuing her. He flopped bonelessly out of the closet-like pantry, tumbling to the ground before her.

She skittered away from this ghoulish scene, running to the window, flinging it open ruthlessly before tumbling out without even a thought of the drop. Soft, wet mud cushioned her fall, slurping beneath her feet as she raced to the little red bug.

Keys…keys…!

Fishing in her pockets with wet, slippery fingers, she clutched for the keys, the small bits of metal feeling like an answered prayer in her hands. Forcing the key into the ignition desperately, she groaned in frustration as the temperamental vehicle refused to turn over and take her far away from this nightmare.

As she sobbed and cursed the truculent Bug, her pleas for it to start were cut short by something white cutting up through the darkness out side her windows. Rising like a ghost from the mist, she found herself yet again staring into the single eyehole of that damned pillowcase covered face. He leered in at her before disappearing again from her view. Her heart pounded violently in her chest, as she scanned the darkness for a clue to where he'd gone. His vanishing act was somehow more terrifying than if he'd managed to get the door open and pull her out to certain death.

She didn't have to wonder about his absence too long however, his presence was made crystal clear as that familiar pitchfork tore through the soft top of the Bug, rigid metal tines searching, ripping. Flesh and bone fingers soon replaced the rusty iron ones as he snaked an arm in through the hole in the roof, groping about in search of the lock.

She summoned every ounce of courage within her to grab the door handle and push out with all of her strength, effectively toppling her attacker. As he fell backwards onto the wet earth, she launched herself out of the car and ran like a hunted thing.  
Already he was climbing to his feet to continue the chase as she raced up the slight incline to take temporary cover in the foliage of a large shrub.

She waited anxiously, adrenaline screaming through her veins as he doggedly pursued her, the slippery mud doing little to slow him down. In a moment he would be upon her, and Ginny would soon find herself shuffling off this mortal coil. As he closed in on her hiding place, pure survival instinct led her to kick out, sneaker-clad foot striking his groin. To her joy and relief, he crumpled to his knees with a groan, as she tore through the brush supremely grateful for small miracles.

Jason forced himself up off the cold wet ground with some difficulty. Pain still coursed through his lower half hotly, although it took a fast backseat to the rage flowing all the more thickly through his veins now. Stumbling to his feet, he charged after Ginny, wanting nothing more than to repeatedly run her through with the pitchfork after her decidedly low attack. She'd know pain when he was finished with her, he'd make sure of that.

He could see her not so far ahead, slipping into an empty cabin thinking she would be able to hide from him there. She could try, but there would be no hiding. He'd find her, just as he'd found that other girl, the one who'd run away from the Bronco in what seemed like ages ago. This girl would meet the same messy end, just as she had.

Entering the cabin, he took his time stalking through the building, scanning the darkness for the girl, grudgingly admitting she'd done a fairly good job of hiding. He paced throughout the cabin, before going back to the door to peer out into the woods. It was almost as if she'd disappeared, and for a split second he wondered if she'd actually managed to give him the slip when the scent of ammonia hit him as a telling puddle seeped from underneath the bed across the floor boards. Aha, he had her.

Let her think she'd outsmarted him. A nearby chair beckoned to him, and he climbed on top of it, pitchfork poised to strike. The fool girl would eventually come out from her hiding place, and then, he'd have her. Sure enough, before long she began easing out from underneath the bed, glancing around nervously. He waited, and just as he prepared to plunge the pitchfork down to skewer her, the old chair gave way underneath him sending him sprawling to the ground. The pitchfork snapped upon impact, leaving him clutching the useless handle as he drug himself to his feet.

He had no time whatsoever to do anything other than drop the broken handle as a terrible sound cut through the night and straight towards him. Backing away from the screeching, chugging machine, he found himself actually afraid for the first time tonight. Ginny took an ill-aimed swiped at him, causing him to trip over a small table and crash into the corner. Before he even had time to react a chair came splintering down him, and he could do nothing but watch as she tore out of the cabin and into the woods.


	25. Chapter 25

Ginny headed into the woods as if driven by the same unreliable motor that powered her little red Bug, running at a full clip and then stopping suddenly, out of energy. She did this for awhile, sputtering along through the brush, before finally coming to a small clearing. In it sat a very strange little building, a shack really, and it definitely was not part of Packanack. There was someone at home, however, for a single lantern was lit and perched in the front window.

"Oh my God...please help me!" she announced her arrival with a frightened cry.

Pushing the door open, she was immediately struck by the awful smell. She put a hand to her face partly to wipe away caked mud and streaked mascara, partly to keep that rotten smell of decay away from her nostrils. Already she could tell there were dead things in here. Fear soaked back into her as she looked around, seeing no sign of anyone amidst the ruined furniture and scrap wood. The lantern's light, which had seemed like a beacon of salvation mere seconds ago, showed only scattered trash and sinister shadows. Who on earth could live like this?

Then she noticed movement outside a window, and screamed when she realized that it was the terrible, one eyed pillowcase again, bobbing up and down as the killer ran up to the dwelling. Ginny dove into the back room, her raging flight response ignoring that the smell was even worse in there. She slammed the door shut behind her and then barred it with a log lying nearby. Shivering madly, she waited for the inevitable and was still unprepared for him throwing his weight violently against the door. Backing away, she knew the flimsy patchwork of plyboard would not hold up long under his assault.

Ginny spun around, looking for an escape route. But instead of seeing a blessed back door or even a window to squeeze through, she came face to face with a candlelit altar featuring a shriveled, severed head as the centerpiece. A shriek tore itself from her lungs as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. A mummy in a bathrobe was sitting against the altar, the handle of some weapon jutting from the side of its head. The gaping mouth seemed to be attempting speech, trying to tell the tale of its demise even in death. Ginny did hear a voice then, but it simply said:

_There are more of us here._

That's when she saw Terri lying on her back nearby, her own mouth pulled open in death. On the other side was the uptight cop that Paul had been such a delightful smart-ass to earlier. Her own ruminations back at the bar flashed through her mind then, and she realized that she _had_been right. There was a Jason Voorhees, he was not just a child corpse on the bottom of Crystal Lake, and this was the shrine to his beheaded mother, who had killed girls like Ginny for him. Now he was back, also in the business of killing girls like her, and she would soon join Terri as a trophy if she didn't think of something fast. He was chopping the door apart out there, savage blows raining down on her hiding place.

She saw the sweater draped over the altar, and that triggered more of Jason's story to come rushing forth. He had disappeared from society at age eleven, right? Right. Because of his deformities and mental handicap he had only really known his mother, right? Right. That love had turned to utter devotion, probably even before he saw her die avenging him, right? Right. And by the looks of this shrine, his child like mind really was crying out for her resurrection. That meant she had a slim chance of living.

_Well go on then, Nancy Drew,_ she thought, _pull that nightmare over your head and become Mommy._

Oh, it reeked, it absolutely reeked of sour water and old blood. But Ginny suppressed her hair trigger gag reflex and got it on. Stooping before the altar, she arranged her hair in approximately the same way as the awful head in front of her. _Okay, little girl, no time for stage fright or stomach butterflies. You have a show to put on, and your one man audience has arrived._

She turned to face Jason, who had reached through the hole he chopped and lifted the log away. He was already rushing in to ax her.

"Jason! It's all done, Jason. You've done your job well and Mommy is pleased."

First he had seen the awful girl called Ginny invade his own home, and then he had been forced to chop through his own door because she had locked herself in Mother's shrine. _His mother's shrine!_A place more holy than a hundred churches, where false prophets preached of resurrection, a place known only to him and the dead lying as offerings to her poor, bodiless head.

He had to get in there, kill this awful girl the way he had all the others, for Mother. He wielded the pick-ax like a man on the most sacred of missions, goring the door the way he had gored necks and torsos. But after he lifted the bar away and rushed in, Jason came face to face with the girl wearing his mother's bloodstained sweater. It was still the girl called Ginny, but also the woman called Pamela. He could see his mother in those wet, sympathetic eyes, and hear her in that gentle, soothing voice. Perhaps the miracle had finally happened! Wild joy coursed through his veins, making his heart swell in his chest. His mother had returned! The long road of killing had led back to his humble home, to this room where he had spent years weeping and curled up like a lonely forest animal at the base of her altar, making strangled, painful sounds that were barely human.

Now she was speaking to him, saying that his job was done and she was proud of him.

"That's a good boy. Good boy, Jason. Come to Mommy," she said, the tender young voice of Ginny becoming older, more mature. Slowly he lowered his pick-ax, remembering how he had rushed into her loving arms so many times as a child, how he had so desperately wanted to after drowning, after they had left him to die with the swamp water filling his lungs, how he had wanted to again after seeing Alice cleave her head from her neck.

"Mother has a reward for you." He came further into the room, head tilted to one side and suddenly he couldn't believe it, for the cowering Ginny just shone too brightly despite his mother's words. Pamela Voorhees was not here. He raised the ax again.


	26. Chapter 26

"Jason, Mother is talking to you!" It took every bit of nerve Ginny possessed to not flinch back from the heavy old pick-ax the monster was even now poised to strike with. Confusion registered in that single eye yet again as he cocked that curiously hooded head.

Please let this work… oh please…

He seemed to be struggling within, as the pick-ax slowly, oh so slowly began to creep downwards.

Jason, Mother is talking to you..

To her immense relief he lowered the ax again, as she fought not sigh in relief and risk shattering the fragile grasp she held over him again. This was no time to relax, even enthralled as he was for the moment, he was without a doubt dangerous, and there was no doubt in her mind that if she failed at this she was as good as dead.

"Come on. Come on… That's my boy." Although he had not abandoned his weapon the way she had hoped he would, Ginny was almost astonished with how quickly his demeanor had changed from ready to slaughter her with a rusty old pick ax to almost complete docility. It seemed that her gamble was paying off, but better not to call the game before she cashed in her chips.

To her surprise, he obeyed, eye riveted on her as she struggled to smile encouragingly, like his mother might have when trying to convince him to eat just one more bite of his vegetables before promising him cookies.

Well, Ginny, he's listening, he's coming over. How exactly do you plan to pull that machete out on him before he realizes you're not his beloved Mommy and he decides to finish what he started with that ax? Honestly, she hadn't thought that far ahead. She could barely believe her ruse had worked thus far, but while she might be able to convince him to lower his weapon and approach her, she doubted that her silver-tongued mother act would convince him to just stand there and let her run him through with the machete she held behind her back.

Her hands twitched as she contemplated the concealed blade, every fiber in her screaming out to end it now, before her cat and mouse game played out. No, better to wait until she could deliver one solid blow, he needed to be closer…

Besides, she needed to get him down on her level. It would be much easier to bring the blade down with sufficient force from a greater height. Yes, get him down on his knees…

Ginny's own calculation shocked her. Sweet, peaceful Ginny, who cried over accidentally running over a squirrel, who still cried watching Bambi, for Christ's sake was trying to puzzle out the best way to quickly end another's life, killer or not.

"Come, kneel down." He slowly drew closer, like a feral cat being cajoled into approaching a dish of food. Although he continued to obey her, suspicion was still evident in that eye, and for a moment Ginny wondered if she hadn't taken it too far too quickly. "That's a boy." She added soothingly, hoping she could convince him to heed her request.

It was the only way.

_Kneel down… Kneel down Jason…_  
Mommy's voice issuing from Ginny held him in thrall, and he found himself approaching the girl wearing her sweater, who had somehow become her. This was…somehow not what he had expected. He'd expected Mommy to somehow be alive, corporeal, not to manifest through another, especially not a girl that he failed to see any redeeming qualities in.

Was this what his efforts had wrought, some sort of vessel for Mommy? He wavered for a moment, but upon hearing Mommy's soothing voice he pressed on, until her was standing before the girl who it seemed was becoming her. Pamela's face flashed before him, and almost automatically he acceded to her request, ashamed of the doubt that still lingered in his mind. What did he know of resurrection, of magic? He only knew he had offered tribute after tribute to her, and the blood staining his hands must have finally appeased whatever god that had heard his mute petition.

She stood before his homemade shrine, illuminated by the dozens of candles, that mother-glow shining so brightly upon her face that he'd have been struck dumb if he'd even had the ability to speak anymore.

_That's my good boy. Good Jason…_

He could only gaze up from his spot at her feet with near worship in his eye as the Ginny/Mommy thing began to draw something from behind her back. She had spoke of a reward after all, and mommy had always been so giving…

But it wasn't a box firecrackers or any sort of baked good she produced, it was his own machete. Jason looked up in confusion as she raised the weapon, only to be greeted with

**MOMMY!**

Her all too lifeless head remained on the shrine, eyes blank, unseeing.

Looking from her obviously lifeless visage back to the Ginny/Mommy thing…

No, wait. No Mommy, nothing even reminiscent of her anymore.

Just her. Just Ginny, the girl who'd dared to enter the shrine, to invade his home, to don his saintly mother's relics, to stand in her place and whisper sweet lies arousing false hope.

To TRICK him.

The fury coursing through him was like nothing he'd ever felt, as he brought the ax up to deflect her carefully orchestrated would-be deathblow. The machete clattered away uselessly, and he brought it down again against the lying, mother-impersonating girl's jean clad calf, gashing it wide open. She shrieked in pain, and just as he drew back to deliver a killing blow of his own, he heard a man call out her name and felt arms ensnaring him.

Dropping the pickax in the struggle, he turned his rage toward this interloper, wrestling him up against the wall of his shack roughly. Such rough activity was too much for the crudely built domicile, and poorly reinforced rotted boards rained down upon them. Ginny was ignored for the moment, however not forgotten at all. First he would dispatch the man responsible for bringing all of those unwanted people here in the first place, and then it would be Ginny's turn.

Even as he scuffled with that Steve Christy wannabe, in his mind he was killing Ginny a thousand times over, each imagined death more gruesome and painful than the one before it. Jason managed to wrestle Ginny's would-be rescuer down to the ground, and retrieve the ax he dropped earlier. Ax in hand once again he reared back with it intending to drive it straight into his victim's head, and then finish Ginny off.

But as he raised the blade, searing pain shot through his shoulder and chest. He looked down in disbelief to see his a familiar blade protruding through the front of his blue flannel shirt. His hand went to the wound unbidden, disbelieving.

But how…?

Everything was rapidly growing cold save for the blade that burned like hellfire. As he slowly fell backwards, still clutching his pickax, Jason caught sight of Ginny's horrified face even as his vision began to darken for the second time in his life. An incredible sense of déjà vu ran through him, as he dimly realized why this all seemed familiar to him.

He was dying.

Jason could do nothing but lay helplessly on the floor of his shack even as he was vaguely aware of fingers working at the tie securing his hood. The cold, crushing feeling of death overrode the coolness of the night air on his exposed face, and the rushing of blood in his ears made it difficult to hear Paul's disgusted oath upon viewing it.

And yet as he lay there, the coldness seemed to recede the slightest bit, and he was aware of footsteps leading out of the room, and the door to his shack swing open then closed. The wound burned brighter, yet the coldness was steadily retreating.  
The darkness fogging his mind and vision must have taken it's cue, for it also began to recede. Soon, all that remained was the pain of the wound, and the burning hatred that filled him now.

The effort to lift his body from the ground was staggering, but amazingly he was soon upright again. Struggling for breath, he looked down at Mommy questioningly, only to be met with the silence of past years.

Jason stood there, fists clenching, the rusty machete blade still embedded in his flesh. Death had come to claim him, he was sure of it, but had hesitated and withdrawn for whatever reason.  
He didn't know quite know if that was a good thing or not, but he did know that as long as he continued this existence he would continue to kill, that his hands would remain bloody. Of that he was sure.

He could feel it in his bones.


End file.
